


Devilish Impulses

by KittyGetsLoose



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Drama, M/M, Non-con committed by a minor OC, Romance, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-02
Updated: 2011-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-21 15:03:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 39
Words: 208,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyGetsLoose/pseuds/KittyGetsLoose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He impulsively broke the covenant, then remade it. But can the trust, once shattered, be recovered? Sebastian must work twice as hard to rebuild what he briefly discarded. Shotacon, yaoi. Divergence from anime plot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Unwanted

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** I don't own Kuroshitsuji, and make no money or profit from writing this fanfic; Yana Toboso has all the rights to the original manga and anime and the characters in them.

The boy wants to dress himself.

"Leave," he orders Sebastian coldly, pushing the covers off and straightening the nightshirt that has slipped off one pale and slender shoulder. He sits up at the edge of his bed, his bare feet dangling several inches above the floor.

The devil of a butler sets down the morning tea tray on the side table and withdraws with a bow, graced by a knowing smile that provokes a scowl from the young earl.

The scowl is all he gets – for now. No rebukes, not just yet.

But while Sebastian is setting out his master's breakfast of English clover honey with trimmed, fine-grained bread lightly tanned to a pale gold, the bell predictably rings for him. The timing is deliberately, impeccably, bad, which is what makes it so interesting.

He makes his way back up the stairs and enters Ciel Phantomhive's bedroom.

"You rang for me, Young Master?" the butler asks, smooth as the curls of butter he had been placing perfectly into the china dish downstairs at the time he was summoned.

With the merest upward tilt of his chin, the earl communicates several messages all at once: "Come here"; "Finish up"; and naturally, "You deserve every inconvenience I can possibly impose on you, you piece of slime."

All without having to utter a word.

Sebastian obeys. Of course he does. He approaches the child, goes down on one knee before him, and adds the finishing touches to his master's dressing: securing the straps that hold his socks up on his delicate calves, buckling his shoes, slipping the topmost buttons through the buttonholes, and forming a casually elegant bow with the blue ribbon around the boy's delicate neck.

Every other point of attire has been seen to by the young earl himself. From his shoes to the main articles of his expensive clothing up to the fine black silk patch over his right eye, he was already fully dressed by the time Sebastian re-entered the bedroom.

Sebastian has not seen the child in a state of undress for six days now. A peculiar situation, considering that the demon butler has, from the beginning of their association, attended to every detail of his wardrobe and grooming. Everything from slipping his undergarments onto his body in the morning and off him at night, to waiting on him during baths, very lightly brushing his fine raven hair with its iridescent hints of blue (the master does not like it too neat), and tying on the carefully stitched silk that hides from the world that emblem of their unholy contract, imprinted upon one iris.

It is that contract which is the cause of the present tension. The symbol in the young master's eye, and its glove-covered counterpart on the back of the butler's left hand, look the same as they ever did. But he knows, and the boy knows, that they are new. The marks disappeared briefly from both their bodies six days ago, when the first contract was broken. When the new agreement was reached, identical symbols formed again in the same places.

Ciel is not pleased with the new contract. He will take it out on Sebastian until his simmering anger is spent.

"I was supposed to be dead by now," the boy states bluntly.

Here it comes again.

"I was supposed to be dead and gone, out of this world," he growls in the manner only a thirteen-year-old child can. "I was ready."

"You were too ready," Sebastian remarks politely.

"Bastard."

It was a foolish whim – even devils have whims. An impulsive remark – even devils may be impulsive. A perverse response – devils are always singular creatures. And just like that, the contract was void, opening the way for its replacement.

But there were no hysterics then, and none now, from Ciel Phantomhive. No screaming or crying. He is resolute as always. The quick flashes of anger that flare from time to time are all the more striking because he is for the most part so cold.

"Would it please the young master to partake of breakfast in the morning room, or shall I bring the tray upstairs?" Sebastian asks, ignoring the epithet the child has just graced him with.

Ciel glares at him, but answers evenly enough: "I shall be in the study."

"Very good, my lord," Sebastian replies, bowing, lifting the silver tray with the empty cup and teapot balanced on it before moving smoothly across the room, a step behind the boy. He flows around him like a shadow at the last to open the bedroom door for him.

Once downstairs, the earl vanishes into his study, and Sebastian returns to the kitchen to add the finishing touches to the breakfast tray. The toast has cooled too much to be served to the young master now, so he swiftly makes ready several more fresh slices. The other servants can always eat the unwanted pieces.

Ciel does not look up when Sebastian enters the study. He is deep in the correspondence and accounts involving the confectionery half of his business concerns – matters he believed he had abandoned forever only six days ago, but which now urgently require his attention.

The butler sets down the tray at the edge of the desk.

"Please eat the toast before it grows cold," he says to the boy.

A non-committal murmur that could mean anything or nothing is the only response he gets from the earl.

"Shall I spread the butter for you, and drizzle some honey over?"

"No."

"It will not be good for the young master to consume soggy toast with softening butter." Besides, he has taken pains to make the toast perfect, and it is deteriorating with every second that passes, almost like a living thing.

"Go away."

Ciel is still not looking at him.

Sebastian smiles to himself. He could insist. The contract does not forbid him to oppose the young earl's wishes. Even under the old contract, which was stricter, he had been free to refuse Ciel's childish demands for sweets just before dinner, or to be set down when he had snatched him into his arms in times of danger. If done for the safety and well-being of the master, even direct orders might be disobeyed without damaging the contract.

Only when Ciel words his directives as specific commands that draw upon their covenant, or purposefully displays the mark in his eye as he orders Sebastian to carry out a task, would Sebastian be obliged to obey although he might be loath to do so.

For now, he might insist on the child's compliance for his health's sake. But this is not a time to fight over such a trivial matter, and the earl will hardly die from eating soggy toast, so he backs down.

"Very good, sir," he says, and retreats from the study.

Unsurprisingly, he is called back several times in the course of the morning, to see that one letter or another is sent out. The earl could easily have waited until he had accumulated all the correspondence, but has chosen to inconvenience his butler instead. He is venting on Sebastian his frustration over having any correspondence at all – if he were dead, he would have none.

There are to be no music, art or dance lessons today – business matters take precedence over such things, so none of the tutors will be calling.

By mid-morning, Ciel has taken out enough of his general irritation with life on his demonservant to settle down calmly to elevenses. The snack comprising a plate of orange biscuits mildly echoed in flavour by a pot of Earl Grey tea appears to please his taste buds and soothe him temporarily. No doubt his displeasure will mount again as more responsibilities cry for his attention in the course of the day.

Indeed, it does.

The highlight for Sebastian of Ciel's afternoon meeting with one of the managers of his confectionery company is a toppled pot of ink – very artfully toppled, if Sebastian may venture his opinion – spilling its dark contents over the expensive Chinese silk rug which the desk rests on.

"I shall have the rug cleaned at once, my lord," Sebastian says, glancing at the spreading stain, which is taking on a shape rather like the head of a dog. A big, black dog.

"You do that," Ciel says, leaving the study with the deferential manager in tow. "This is just the kind of thing you signed up for, isn't it?"

A later meeting with the people to whom he will entrust the launch, distribution, supply and logistical matters pertaining to the curry bread for which he has obtained a royal warrant also requires Sebastian's presence, to confirm that the recipe he wrote out for his master and the hired chefs a few days ago is the correct one, and has lost or added no ingredients in the copying of it.

"That is quite correct, my lord," Sebastian avers, giving the recipe a half-second's glance. "Nothing is out of place."

"The only thing different, of course, is the one who will be doing the cooking," Ciel remarks, giving Sebastian a deeply thoughtful look, as if he is contemplating banishing him permanently to the kitchen of the food factory that will be producing these bread rolls.

But the master, if he has considered such a thing, swiftly reconsiders, no doubt thinking that no one can torture Sebastian better than he himself can, at close quarters.

After an excellent roast dinner with buttered vegetables, glazed potatoes and a touch of wine, chased by a dessert of caramelised, brandy-soaked oranges in a lightly flambéed syrup, the earl disappears into his library.

"Shall I run your bath for you, young master?" Sebastian asks dutifully, entering the library at the usual time for the child's pre-bedtime ablutions – although Ciel has shut him out of the bathroom these six days.

"Yes."

But when the butler returns to the library to announce that the bath is ready, the boy tells him to go away; he will see to it himself.

Sebastian waits upstairs to be sure that the water remains hot, but the earl does not come.

After three quarters of an hour, he is obliged to abandon the bathwater after giving it one last dose of several new pails of freshly heated water. He returns to the library, where he finds that the child has fallen asleep in his large wingback chair.

"Young Master?" Sebastian says softly beside his ear.

Ciel starts awake and instinctively lashes out at Sebastian, dealing him a blow on the cheek with the sharp corner of the book he fell asleep reading – a hardbound copy of Keats' sonnets.

Sebastian could have dodged the blow easily, but he permits it to land. If it will assuage the child's anger infinitesimally, that is a good enough reason to let himself be abused.

"The young master will naturally be made sleepy by such poems that speak of drowsiness whilst listening to nightingales," Sebastian comments with an unflappable smile, gently taking the book from Ciel and returning it to its proper place on one of the shelves. Everything in the manor, down to the titles of the books, is as it was before the latest devastation. Sebastian saw to that.

"Shall I help you upstairs to your room if you are too sleepy to negotiate the stairs, Young Master?" Sebastian asks.

"Don't touch me," Ciel mutters.

The other servants are still awake, cleaning up at the end of the day and also tidying up after themselves in the servants' kitchen, where they have just had their own dinner. The lights in the house are still on, so Sebastian does not need to illumine the earl's way with the candelabra.

Ciel enters the bedroom and closes the door in Sebastian's face. Although he is plainly unwanted in there, the butler waits outside the door because the boy is sleepy, and the water may not be as hot, or as cooled, as he might want it, considering how it was left unattended while he had to fetch him from the library.

Sebastian is not summoned into the room or bathroom, even after fifteen minutes of waiting. But he stands outside nonetheless, because his instincts advise him that he should.

True enough, he soon detects the sound of a slip, a little splutter, and at once he is standing in the bathroom unbidden, lifting a choking Ciel out of the water.

"Master must not fall asleep in the bath when no one is there to watch over him," Sebastian says quietly, wrapping the startled boy in a thick towel before he can voice a protest, and lifting him into his arms.

He is small for a thirteen-year-old. Perhaps he will grow. Perhaps not. He is not very much taller than when Sebastian first met him three years ago, a little thing covered in blood and bitterness, seeking destruction and vengeance.

Ciel does not struggle in Sebastian's arms. Perhaps he thinks it would be undignified to do so when the whole length of his arms and half his legs are trapped inside the towel. But he does not lean into the butler either. He lets himself be borne to the bedside, where he is set down on his feet on the warm, woven wool carpet.

Sebastian unwraps the towel and pats the young master's body dry, paying special attention to the hair and ears, which have suffered an unintended dunking in the bathwater. The eye-patch is soaked too, so it has to come off to be taken away for cleaning and drying, and a fresh one placed on the bedside table for use in the morning.

Totally bare of the least scrap of clothing now, Ciel's flesh is pale, starting to form goosebumps now that the heat from the bath is wearing off. Sebastian notes that the child seems none the worse for six days of lacking his butler's usual level of attentive care. He is clean, looks as well-fed as may be expected of one so naturally skinny, and his flesh is of a healthy colour compared with its sickly pallor during some of the worst times of the past.

The butler checks him over fleetingly, not intending to let the child see that he is inspecting him, seconds before he buttons his nightshirt over his slender frame and helps him step into his undergarments.

"Don't think I didn't see you looking," Ciel speaks in a monotone, his deep-blue eyes unreadable even to the devil.

"Even one such as I must look at what he is doing from time to time, so that nightshirts do not end up buttoned over the young master's face, and to be aware of the master's state of health," Sebastian responds easily.

"And this is the kind of thing you chose to do more of," Ciel remarks uninterestedly, before turning away and climbing into his bed, whose cover Sebastian has already turned down for him.

"Good night, Young Master," Sebastian says, tucking the warm, quilted cover securely around the child. "Call me if you require anything."

"Get the hell out of my bedroom."

* * *


	2. Whim

Sebastian leaves Ciel's bedroom, chased by wisps of the boy's displeasure nipping at his heels like dogged little imps. As he traverses the maze-like passageways of the mansion, he considers that all this is the direct consequence of what he did on the night when everything and nothing changed.

He sees the scene as clearly as if it were before him now.

The setting is as it ought to be, as they have both intended it to be. In the stillness at the heart of the demon-made island, the boy waits silently to be destroyed. He thinks he is as good as dead regardless of the devil preparing to feast on him, but he does not know that he is as alive as he ever was. The near-mortal wounds he sustained in the final battle with the enemy have been healed by powers beyond his comprehension.

The massive cypresses looming over the crumbling courtyard are apt witnesses to the act to come, so closely associated are they with sadness and death. Sebastian, temporarily one-armed, removes his remaining glove with his teeth and caresses the child's face with his bare hand, smoothly slipping the eye-patch off him. The scrap of silk floats to the ground under the stone bench on which the earl sits.

The child is brave, asking for not an ounce of mercy or gentleness. But Sebastian believes he knows better. He knows from centuries of experience how the boldest of them shudder at the last, always. Standing in front of the bench, he bends down and leans in very close to the boy, anticipating even from this most resolute of creatures just a little resistance, hesitation, and perhaps, at the final moment, terror.

Nothing but the widening of those beautiful eyes, followed by their closing steadily, as if in quiet determination to sleep.

Nothing but that.

As good as nothing at all.

He waits a second longer – one fatal second in which an irresistible impulse of amusement steals into his devilish soul and takes over.

"What? Not putting up a fight?" he murmurs next to Ciel's left ear.

The boy starts, for that was the moment he had expected his life to end and his soul to be seized. "I said you could have me," he replies, both annoyed by the taunt and thrown off balance by the unforeseen pause. "It was a promise. I am not about to break my promise."

"Even so – no terror? No resistance?" Sebastian's voice holds a hint of mirth. "I am a little disappointed, Young Master. I _do_ love the frantic throes of prey whose struggles against me are so futile."

"This is what we have both been waiting for, so get on with it," Ciel snaps. "Whether I struggle or not is beside the point. Do what our contract states you may once I have achieved my objectives. I have achieved them, and you are to proceed with the final part of our bargain."

A thrill surges through Sebastian as he hovers, fangs poised an inch from the face of the boy who has closed his eyes again and bared his throat. He loves devouring his prey, especially such delicious little morsels as the one before him now. But then... he has devoured so many before. Perhaps it is time for something new. His instincts warn him of danger – the danger of not fulfilling his contract, the danger of disobeying an order from one to whom he is still bound, the danger of opening a new door to a world he has never navigated before. Despite those instincts sounding their alarm bells, Sebastian perversely pushes on, breaches the barrier, breaks new ground, even as he feels the bone, flesh and skin of his severed arm extending from the wound, forcing their way back into existence.

It is such a simple word. One single, brief and fatal word filled with all the demonic sincerity in the netherworld: "No."

There it goes. Just like that. The covenant, the agreement, the dark world they have built. Crumbling, crumbling, crumbled.

"No?" Ciel echoes in disbelief, his eyelids snapping open. "What did you...?"

The mark of the covenant is gone from his right eye, gone from the back of the devil's freshly regrown left hand.

"D-did you just break the covenant?" Ciel gasps.

"I did."

"Why?" the child's cry is not a cry of triumph, but of anger. "You promised! I have nothing further to live for. Take me now!"

Again, the plain word: "No."

"What is wrong with you?" Ciel demands.

"Nothing is wrong with me," the demon replies. "But I begin to wonder, little earl, if something might not be wrong with _you_ – granted, many things have always been wrong with you, but this is quite absurd. Not one protest, not one plea, not one scream? How unsettling. You are clearly _off_. For the record, I do not enjoy being afflicted by bouts of food poisoning."

"Damn you," Ciel growls. "I've made myself ready, so proceed! This is an order!"

"The contract is breached. You have no power to order me to do anything. If you are so determined to die, there are numerous ways to achieve that without my help. This game no longer amuses me."

He straightens up to tower over Ciel, and gazes down at the furious boy for several moments before he turns to walk away, saying: "I shall do you the favour of taking you back to the mainland."

"You can take yourself back to hell or wherever you came from," Ciel mutters.

"Ah. Of course you are free to refuse my offer," he smiles in a manner intended to display his fangs, something which the butler Sebastian would never do to his master, but which the unleashed devil has no qualms about. "You may choose to starve here, or perhaps wait for the arrival of another unholy creature to do with you as it pleases."

No answer comes from the child. As the demon continues to stride away from the courtyard, he hears footsteps on the flagstones behind him, so he keeps walking. But he realises at once that the footsteps are growing fainter instead of louder, moving away from him. Very well, if the child wants to lose himself in this dark island, so be it. He has offered him transport back to London, and has had that offer declined.

As he reaches the beach, however, curiosity prompts him to wonder: What is that young fellow thinking?

The devil finally stops and turns around.

The boy, he sees, has made his way to one of the numerous cliff edges that carve up and outline this unholy isle. Without once turning his head to cast so much as a backward glance at the one who came so close to devouring him – the demon finds that the most insulting part of it – the child calmly leans forward and drops himself over the precipice.

_The brat!_

Wounded pride, or thoughtless instinct, or foolish impulsiveness – whatever the force may be – propels the dark being into flight, for when the boy's fall begins, it is unexpectedly unacceptable to him.

In half a second, he covers the distance between the beach and the edge of the cliff, and in another half-second, spans the gap between the cliff edge and the plummeting child. He snatches the young earl from certain destruction and bears him back onto the solid stone of the island's surface.

"What a ridiculous creature you are," he remarks, looking down at the little figure in his arms.

Ciel is breathless from tumbling through the air, and the shock of being caught inches from the rocks in the water below. But he finds his tongue soon enough, for he says coldly: "You told me I could die without your help."

"Since when have you done everything that I tell you to do?" he returns.

"What do you _want_ from me?" The young one is angry now, starting to physically resist being clasped to the ancient being's chest.

His former butler sets him down on his feet, and explores his own impulses with growing interest before saying: "Curiously enough, I believe it would please me to see you live, at least for now."

"What?"

"Why groom a prize-winning show horse to be the very best it can, only to slaughter it for meat in its prime?" comes the rhetorical remark.

"What does it matter to one such as _you_ if it is a show horse, as long as you want to devour it? Which I thought you _did_."

"You have not been an easy steed to groom, obstinate little earl. My efforts to ensure that you conducted yourself as would befit my service, your dignity and rank; that you properly learnt the finer skills one of your birth ought to learn; and that you were perfectly fed and turned out appear now to have made you rather more amusing to me, but alas, have not improved your flavour."

"I am not here to amuse you," Ciel growls, his small hands balling into tight fists.

"That isn't for you to say at present," responds the other as he gazes at him with mischief in his eyes, which do not look at all like Sebastian's eyes. "I have had souls enough, but it has been a long time since I derived such entertainment from a potential meal." He speaks in a manner both wry and haughty – the kind of speech Sebastian would never make.

"I said I was not here to–"

"Yes, you think you are not here to entertain me. But as our former connection has been severed, you could be anything now. If you do not enjoy the thought of being my toy, little one, let us make a new agreement," proposes the devil.

"I've had enough of you and your slippery agreements," Ciel declares.

"Have you, now? What can you possibly do without a contract with me?"

"Don't be ridiculous. If you don't want to take me, I don't need you any more."

"You won't need me if you die. But I have just now decided that I will not permit you to end your own life. Therefore, you are to live. If you live, you will need me. And I will be by your side only if we have a contract."

"Your contracts are worth less than the dirt under my shoes," Ciel hisses. "I don't want you."

"Then you shall be on your own, with no assistance from me, save that at any time your existence is endangered, I shall prevent your demise, then withdraw like a shadow. With your impossible responsibilities and the demands of your social rank, I promise you that such a life would be a fate worse than... well, than death. Unfortunately."

"That does not trouble me in the least."

"Perhaps it does not trouble _you_. But will the Phantomhive name fare so well when the incumbent earl cannot carry out his work policing the underworld? If you carry on weakly, with no backing, your good name will turn to dirt as one failure succeeds the next. How will your fiancée live when you have lost your power? Her mother, your aunt, was born a Phantomhive. She knows full well what her family is capable of. She has grudgingly admired your ability to uphold the family reputation despite your youth. Will she be so pleased with you when she realises what a helpless child you are? If she should still commit her daughter to your care, what will the poor girl be marrying into, if she becomes your wife when you have grown hopelessly inefficient, toothless, unprotected?"

"How dare you, Sebastian?" Ciel demands. "How dare you make such despicable threats?"

"I was hardly threatening you; I merely stated the facts. But if you prefer to think I was making threats, then at least know that I am no longer 'Sebastian' now that the contract is broken. Don't you realise whom you have been speaking with for the past five minutes? _This_ is who and what I am, little one," his interlocutor reminds him with the kind of cold smile he reserves for adversaries. How quickly the child forgets what he is. "This is what I am like uncollared, untamed, uncontracted. I am a _devil_ , after all, and there are _many_ things I dare to do and say when I am not bound to a master. Do you even understand that I am offering you what I have not offered another human soul in all my centuries of existence? I am asking to give you my services instead of waiting for you to beg for them, in a contract that will be _advantageous_ to you and _challenging_ to me, one that will not require you to meet an end at my hands – unless you genuinely desire that when we reach the end of the new covenant."

"It ought to end _now_!" Ciel protests. "There's nothing – nothing at all for me..."

His words taper off as he struggles with his physical and emotional fatigue, his anger, his confusion. After all, he is but a child.

The devil sees that to push him hard now would only send the boy defiantly over the edge – both the literal edge of hundreds of more attempts to end his life, and the figurative edge of his temper. So he gathers together the fragments of what used to be Sebastian, and presents them carefully before his former master again. He goes down on one knee before him, straightens his ribbon-tie which has gone askew, and says with Sebastian's smile: "That is why I do not want to devour you. You are suspiciously eager to die, and I find myself oddly uninterested in humouring you at this point. Perhaps you would like to make an agreement with me that you will carry on until you truly wish to _live_ , and _then_ I shall kill you and consume your soul?"

That rouses the child's logical mind and irks him enough to stir his contempt. "What a stupid idea," Ciel states coldly. "If I will indeed exist until I am happy to live, why in all the hells would I want you to consume me _then_?"

The one who was once Sebastian continues to present his butler's fangless smile. "That is why we should _not_ make such a foolish contract. I can be all that I was to you again, bound to obey your orders, bound to you. In return, be all that I have seen you to be these three years. Become all that you ought to be, all that I can groom you into, without compromise. If, at the end of five years you are certain that you no longer wish to be associated with me, say the word and I shall disappear from your life forever. If you decide that you want to die, then die by whatever means appeal to you – I shall not stop you, even if you demand that I devour you – although I suspect that eating you even _then_ will make me rather ill."

"Do you think me a fool?" Ciel asks. "No one serves another without reward – you once said so."

"I have many ways of deriving satisfaction from the things I do. Consuming souls is but one of them."

He remains on one knee. Ciel's face is on a level with his. The boy regards him angrily. For one who has lived only thirteen years, five must feel like a very long time. But soon, the resentment in his deep-blue gaze cools, and gradually steels with a new determination.

He asks: "How do I know that you will keep your word when the time comes, when you so easily broke our previous contract at its very end?"

"The previous contract was one in which I always had more power than you, little earl, despite the power that I allowed you to control every move I made. This new agreement I am proposing will not be half as easily broken by me, because I am the one who seeks it."

The child considers his proposal for some time. At last, he speaks with a mixture of disgust, exasperation and resignation in his aristocratic voice: "Very well. You will be my faithful hound again, for five more years."

"We shall need blood to seal this covenant."

Ciel stoically holds his arm out, but the devil shakes his head. "Not this time – this time I am the one who wishes to be bound to you. My blood is what we need."

A cut in the wrist from a dagger-sharp claw and a spilling of demon blood precede a careful spelling out of the detailed terms of the agreement between the pair. The new contract is alive. The symbols have returned to the child's eye and the devil's hand. The covenant is dead; long live the covenant.

"Are you Sebastian again?" questions the boy, suspiciously.

The familiar answer comes, in the familiar voice: "Yes, my lord."

A devil has no pity.

A devil shows no mercy.

A devil does not love.

But he may know whims and fancies, moods and curiosity, lust and desire. And sometimes, an entire world can be changed on a whim.


	3. Trust

Trust is as fragile as glass, so easily shattered.

The boy no longer has complete faith in him. Sebastian knows this is his own doing; it was he who showed his master how quickly the covenant could be made void.

Ciel, panting hard, partially spattered with the woman's blood, grips the smoking gun so tightly in his outstretched hand that his taut knuckles show white between the droplets of dark red liquid marring his skin.

The butler whose body is thrust between the boy and the now-dead female looks down at the weapon, then at the hole it has made in his clothing and inhuman flesh, and back at the boy again.

Ciel glares at him out of the single blue eye on display to the world – he looks half-angry, and half-surprised.

Sebastian puts his gloved hand over the muzzle of the pistol and gently pries it from Ciel's fingers, saying quietly: "Young Master, did you really think I would allow her to run that thing through you?"

Once the firearm is safely free of the earl's grasp, Sebastian slides his own makeshift weapon – a length of rusty iron piping – out of the woman's body, and tosses the cylinder of metal aside. The dead human falls backward onto the dirty ground of the abandoned workhouse, which once used to both shelter and confine helpless children and women worked to the bone for miserable rations, many wasting away from one illness or another.

The place was shut down a long time ago. It is waiting to be turned into a proper factory which will look after its workers well – a better future, everyone hopes. But in the transition from one phase of existence to another, it has become the scene of an unearthly crime. A lady who had failed to return home after calling on her mother was reported missing by her husband and discovered here, dead and shrivelled up, only a day after her disappearance – too little time for the dessication to have been caused by normal decomposition processes.

She was the sixth person in London known to the authorities to have been killed and left in such a state. In the two months preceding her death, five others were lured to one quiet spot or another in the city, to have their lives so completely drawn out of them by something not of this world that their bodies looked like those of the Egyptian mummies that rich and adventurous European explorers are so fond of digging up halfway across the globe and shipping home.

A letter marked with the royal seal was delivered to the manor four days ago, when the cases were finally deemed "unnatural" and reported by the police to higher authorities. The earl was thus brought into the picture, and with Sebastian's help, he has at last cracked half the case.

"This woman was the one controlling the consuming spirit – you are certain?" Ciel asks, getting to his feet without Sebastian's help. His voice is quite steady. He has not cared to respond to Sebastian's remark about his lack of faith in his ability, or willingness, to protect him.

"Yes, my lord," the butler replies. "She gained control of it and used it to feed her with the life forces of other people. Our earlier investigations suggest that she did this to remain youthful forever."

"She _looks_ young," Ciel observes, glancing at the beautiful face, which appears to belong to a woman of no more than twenty years. The woman's skin is flawless. Her hazel eyes, which remain wide open in death, are framed by long, dark lashes.

"She is eighty-five years of age, if our sources are to be believed," Sebastian tells him. "She is no innocent young woman but a self-centred beast. And I would _not_ have allowed her to stab you with that object."

He indicates the sharp, poker-like silver weapon the woman still clutches in her lifeless hand. She had concealed the instrument within the modified handle and frame of the closed-up parasol she held, producing it only when cornered inside the empty building. Sebastian had seized the end of it before it could touch Ciel, and thrust the iron pipe through her body, ending her life. The boy, who had not seen fit to trust in his protection, had simultaneously shot at the woman, making a hole in Sebastian's garments and flesh instead.

"I have little doubt that you would not have allowed her to kill me, but a stab is something rather different, is it not?" Ciel asks in a deceptively casual manner. "I wouldn't have put it past you to let her cripple me for life in order that you might derive more _entertainment_ from it."

"My lord," says Sebastian seriously. "I would not have allowed her to touch you with it."

"We should have kept her alive. We could have made her summon the spirit," Ciel remarks, more to himself than to his companion, as he changes the subject.

"The young master ordered me to kill all the parties responsible," Sebastian responds reasonably.

"Yes," Ciel mutters irritably.

"The woman appears to have worked together with the spirit by using her own well-dressed and well-bred appearance to lure victims away from crowded streets and into quieter areas, possibly under the pretext of requiring assistance with something," Sebastian says, directing the earl's attention away from his annoyance to the bare facts. "We know by now that that is how she operated when she lived in France, then in Holland, until several communities grew suspicious, and she moved to England. But I miscalculated when I believed that the spirit would remain by her side at all times. I was mistaken, my lord, and I do apologise. It seems that she unleashes it occasionally to allow it to feed on human souls for its own nourishment rather than for hers."

"Now the thing is loose."

"It is indeed masterless."

"A hungry beast without a master is uncontrollable," Ciel comments, not without casting a glance at his devil.

Sebastian smiles cryptically, and replies: "An accurate observation."

"Can we stop it before it kills again?"

"We may hunt it down by tracking its scent from what remains on its mistress' body."

"Are you able to do that?"

"Certainly, like any good dog, my young hound-master," Sebastian smiles.

"Then do it."

"At once, my lord."

They hurry out of the workhouse and back onto the pavement, making their way to the spot where the earl's carriage waits, watched over by a street urchin who has been paid to do the job with more coins than he would ordinarily see in a week.

Sebastian gives the street boy yet more coins, to deliver a note Ciel quickly scribbles to their primary contact in Scotland Yard, apprising him of the location at which his men may retrieve the remains of one of the parties responsible for the mysterious deaths. The unwashed child eagerly takes the money and the note from the butler, and sprints away. Then Ciel steps up into his carriage. Sebastian jumps lightly onto the box, and takes the reins. It would be quicker to pick his master up and leap over the rooftops to follow the spirit's scent. But the sun has not quite set, and they may be seen by others if they travel in that fashion.

So by carriage and over the cobbled streets they briskly go, avoiding collisions with other carriages and negotiating the crowds of people crossing everywhere – well-dressed folk heading for the theatres, poorer ones rushing about their business in the hope of earning enough to buy their supper for the night.

Ciel dislikes the crush and bustle of the city, but duty frequently calls him here. Sebastian, without having to glance down into the carriage, knows that the boy must be leaning one cheek on the backs of his fingers, glaring out at the mass of humanity, and thinking how much he hates London.

The butler smiles to himself and urges the horses to pick up the pace, steering them skilfully around all obstacles as he follows the general direction of the spirit's scent, while the sun sinks below the horizon. It is not a difficult task, considering that the creature has been bound by a long but distinct leash of spells to its mistress. The leash snapped when the woman died, but its trail is in the air, and the devil can sniff it out as easily as a hound can follow the scent of his dinner.

They are at the river now, hurrying along the bank. The winter sky has grown dark, and the new electric street lighting, installed here only a few years ago, has switched on like magic. Sebastian briefly wishes for the older eras, when humans had only moonlight, starlight and firelight to see by in the hours of darkness. Even the gas lighting that came into use not so long ago could not illuminate a street like this, so swiftly and easily. He wonders how much longer it will take mortals to invent devices that will make cities glow like daylight even on the deepest nights; he wonders how much longer he will be able to soar over treetops and rooftops unmarked by human eyes.

The butler pulls up the horses gradually, until they slow to a trot, and finally reach a smooth standstill. He springs out of the box seat, opens the carriage door, and extends a hand to Ciel.

"Your Lordship must come with me," he states, respectfully but matter-of-factly, even as he lifts the earl's hat off his head, takes the walking stick from him, and leaves both objects on the seat of the carriage. "It would be unsafe for you to remain here while I pursue the spirit. Vagrants and bands of thieves would never leave one such as you alone."

"What about the horses?" Ciel asks. "We can't leave them here."

"I shall send them back to the town house. They know the way."

Sebastian goes up to the beasts and addresses them in words Ciel cannot decipher. He takes the additional precaution of hauling out a scarecrow-like figure from the storage compartment under one of the seats, draping a cloak about it and jamming a hat over its head, then tying it to the box seat, and binding the reins to it. It looks, in the night, like a bundled-up coachman.

As instructed by Sebastian, the horses obediently turn and leave, pulling the carriage along.

"They'll be stolen," Ciel grumbles.

"If they are, I shall hunt down the thief who dares steal Phantomhive property."

"Hmm. Which way now?" the boy asks, looking down the Embankment and across the river.

"Before we go anywhere else, please allow me..." Sebastian says, whipping out a white handkerchief, dampening it with water from a small glass bottle he takes out from his pocket, and wiping what he can of the droplets of the woman's blood from his master's face, hair, hands and clothing.

Ciel submits with a good grace, certainly with very little squirming, the butler notes, even though the water is cold.

"There – almost as good as new," the devil remarks, studying his work with satisfaction. He puts the bottle of water and the damp handkerchief back into his coat pocket, then asks: "Would the young master prefer to ride on my back or in my arms?"

"I would prefer to walk."

"Alas, we are going across the water, so that mode of transport would be inadvisable." His tone of voice is suitably regretful for a butler.

"That's what bridges are for."

"The nearest bridge is half a mile away. We have wasted enough time in the carriage. If we walk, we will only catch up with the spirit at daybreak."

"It's too bright here, you idiot. We'll be seen."

"The street lighting ends not so very far from here. I can leap from there to the roofs of the boats on the water."

Ciel sees where the darkness begins, and nods, so they hurry over to the stretch where the blackness of night is barely relieved by artificial lighting. Sebastian drops to one knee, allowing Ciel to choose how he will use him as a mount. Ciel considers the crouching figure for a moment, then stands before him so that he may lift him into his arms.

"A sensible choice, my lord – you can ride much more comfortably in my arms than on my shoulders," Sebastian says, as he rises with his easy burden, his left arm supporting the backs of Ciel's knees, gloved hand resting high on the child's right thigh, and his right arm going around the boy's back. Without pause, he launches them both off the wall of the Embankment and lands so impossibly lightly on the cabin roof of one passing ship that its captain dismisses the little bump as nothing more than a pebble dropped by a passing bird of the night.

The speed of their flight from roof to roof, and mast to mast, leaves Ciel unable to reply. The sharp, biting chill of the rushing wind seems to push any choice words he might have for his butler back into the depths of his lungs. He tries not to cling to Sebastian, for he remains resentful of the devil, but they are going so very fast that he cannot help grasping his collar with his left hand, while his right crushes in its small fist the fine wool lapel of Sebastian's overcoat.

He will not, however, give in to the extent of burying his face in the butler's neck – he is too proud for that. He only tucks his head down to prevent his eye-patch from being whipped off by the wind, feeling as if he has not drawn breath at all since they stepped off the thick Embankment wall.

Sebastian feels his resistance. He knows what anger and pride lie behind it. The devilish one thus cannot resist taking an unnecessary detour to a particularly high mast, feeling a whisper of satisfaction as the steep ascent and descent draw an involuntary gasp from the child in his arms.

"There must have been an easier way," Ciel states disapprovingly, when they at last land on solid ground again, on the other side of the Thames.

"Perhaps, but it would not have been so enjoyable, would it, my lord?" Sebastian asks.

"Enjoyable for whom?"

But the butler is on the move again, whisking his little master over the treetops, and the rooftops, speeding after the scent of danger and death.

"Is that... what is it?" Ciel demands in a hushed voice after several minutes of speeding over London, as Sebastian sails down from a tall tree towards a churchyard on the fringes of the city. They have found their quarry. Even Ciel can see it now that it is manifesting itself – an eerie wash of thick white fog that floats amongst the gravestones on a night when there is very little mist. Someone, a man, is backing away from the inchoate shape, stumbling over mounds and bumping into headstones, puffs of vapour rising rapidly from his mouth and nostrils as the fear he feels causes him to breathe hard and fast.

From the man's dressing, Ciel guesses that the intended victim of the unleashed spirit is the vicar of the church whose grounds they are about to land in. The fellow is uttering prayers that soon become audible to Ciel's ears as Sebastian's descent brings them back to earth just inside the churchyard wall. A ginger cat behind the vicar is hissing and spitting at the strange phenomenon. The man is obviously afraid, but he is not frantic yet, and continues to trust in his prayers and to shield the cat as the peculiar mist closes in on him.

"Kill that thing, Sebastian," Ciel commands.

"Yes, my lord."

The devil swoops between the vicar and the spirit. The man's astonishment at seeing an impeccably attired butler interpose himself between him and the nameless mist replaces, for one moment, the fear on his face with an expression of pure surprise. Sebastian spares him a swift backward glare, which sends him scrambling away – after scooping the ginger cat into his arms – towards the odd little figure of the young nobleman with an eye-patch standing in the moonlight by the churchyard wall.

"We'll be out of the way here," the boy states authoritatively, hardly glancing at the man.

"Who are you, young sir?" asks the bewildered vicar. "What is that unholy _thing_?"

"Do you refer to the spirit or my butler?" asks Ciel, without the least attempt at humour.

"A spirit – is _that_ what it is? I came upon it as I was leaving the church for the night. It would not be driven away by my prayers."

"Save your prayers for other things," Ciel tells him. "This creature needs a stronger hand than pleas to your Almighty One."

The vicar stares at him. "Child, do not blaspheme. Your _butler_ has not a stronger hand than _God_."

"Perhaps not. But he is certainly swifter to intervene in some instances than the Almighty."

Sebastian, by some dark power, has compelled the spirit to take a more definite form than mist. It is now a pale ghoul with hollow eyes, uneven fangs and long claws – a primitive species of succubus that can be manipulated by those with the knowledge of how to control and use such creatures for their own purposes.

"Dear Lord," the vicar whispers, wrapping his greatcoat protectively around the cat.

The butler, however, merely narrows his eyes in displeasure at the ugliness of the being hovering before him. He waits patiently until the creature breaks its stance and pounces – or rather, attempts to pounce on him. It shoots towards him, only to find that he is no longer where he was a fraction of a second ago. The humans watching them only know that Sebastian is suddenly behind the ghoul, whipping the glove off his right hand, and thrusting his talons through the creature's incorporeal body.

Surely no one can hold on to a spirit? Surely it will only glide off Sebastian's hand? But no – the butler has hold of something at the core of the spirit – something that keeps it where it is, impaled on his arm. The vicar wonders if it is the moonlight playing tricks on his eyes, but it appears that the butler's fingernails are black as hell.

The nails dig into the core of the ghoul, and it emits an ear-splitting shriek. A door creaks somewhere amongst the few houses further up the road from the church; a window is thrown open. They have very little time left before the churchyard becomes a theatre and the residents of the nearby houses arrive as a gawking audience.

Sebastian crushes the creature's essence in his devil's fist, making it shriek again. But in the next instant, everything falls silent, for the butler leans forward and consumes the spirit, inhaling it like smoke. He swallows, and the churchyard is still again.

"God save us!" the vicar whispers, turning pale. "What did he do? What _is_ he?"

Sebastian, having fed, slips the glove back onto his hand and walks towards his master and the man. The man backs away, into the wall of the churchyard.

" _What_ is he?" the vicar demands again of Ciel.

"Nothing like you," the boy replies.

"Y- yet you trust him near you?" the man asks, incredulously.

" _Trust_ him?" Ciel echoes, turning on the vicar a cynical eye that looks in the moonlight to be the colour of the darkest forests. "I trust him about as far as I can throw him, the bastard."

Despite his statement, the boy shows no hesitation about letting his servant lift him into his arms. The butler turns his head only long enough to give the vicar and his ginger cat a formal nod before he sails over the churchyard wall and vanishes into the night with his little master held securely to his breast.


	4. Taste

Finnian is in a state. He is the only one of the servants that the earl and Sebastian have brought to the town house with them this time. He desperately wishes to confer with Baldroy, or Mey-Rin, or even Mr Tanaka if there is no alternative, but none of the others are here. He considers phoning them at the manor, but it is late. If he wakes them for what later transpires to be nothing worth fussing about, Baldo will pound his head for interrupting his sleep the next time he sees him.

The young man is upset because the master's horses and carriage pulled up at the gate of the town house almost half-an-hour ago, with the master's hat and walking stick inside, and a straw-filled scarecrow perched on the box seat looking for all the world like a dead coachman.

Whatever is going on? Are Lord Phantomhive and Sebastian Michaelis in danger?

Finny has stationed himself on the steps leading up to the front door, pacing from left to right, sometimes going up a few steps, then back down them again. He is on the brink of leading out one of the horses to prepare it for another outing, despite having already rubbed both the beasts down, watered and fed them, and put them into their stalls with lots of fresh straw for bedding. Miraculously, he has neither killed the horses by accident nor broken the carriage through his impossible clumsiness and absurd physical strength.

Although he imagines himself saddling up and galloping across London in search of his master and the butler, he has not the faintest notion of how to track them in this overpopulated city. Still, he decides that taking some useless action is better than none, and makes up his mind to fetch the stronger of the two horses. However, as he turns towards the stalls, someone calls his name.

"Finny," comes a familiar voice from the front gate.

"Master!" Finny gasps, rushing across the paving of the front driveway towards the little figure and the tall, black-clad butler a step behind him.

"Did the horses return?" Ciel asks. He sounds tired.

"Yes, master! They came back all by themselves, with the scarecrow, and your hat and walking stick, which I've carried into the living room. The horses have been seen to."

"Good."

"Are you well, your lordship?" Finny asks, concerned. The earl's fine black hair is badly windblown, and even in the poor lamplight, faint marks visibly decorate his cravat – they look like droplets of blood someone has partly sponged away. There must surely be more, judging by the pattern of splatter on the white silk, but his black frock coat and waistcoat hide all other signs that the young master has once again got too close to someone out to harm him.

"I'm fine," the earl states. He strides across the paving of the driveway, goes up the steps, and enters the house.

Sebastian helps Ciel out of his coat once they are inside the door, then turns to the other servant, saying: "Finny, put the large pot of water on to boil in the kitchen. The master will need it for his bath."

"Yes, Mister Sebastian!" he answers at once, and runs off to the kitchen to do his bidding.

Mey-Rin is usually the one to carry the kettles and pails of hot water upstairs to the earl's bedroom when they are at the manor, where she hands them to Sebastian. It is a hazardous undertaking for the housemaid, considering her propensity for tripping and falling at the slightest provocation, thanks to her inability to see through the thick eyeglasses she wears as a disguise of sorts. But she has somehow managed never to splash the near-boiling liquids all over herself or the furnishings – perhaps, Finny thinks, she secretly removes her glasses when carrying out such risky household tasks.

Tonight, as has been the case for the three previous nights they have spent in London, the task is left to Finnian. When they are at the manor, the gardener rarely has an opportunity, or reason, to go upstairs. Only Mey-Rin and Mr Tanaka, and of course Sebastian, go upstairs and downstairs in the normal course of their duties. So after three nights, it is still a novel sensation to Finny to climb the town house stairs from the kitchen to the master's bedroom. The bedroom door is open, which it usually is when the butler and master are waiting for the hot water; Sebastian never undresses or bathes Ciel until everything is ready, no other servants are in their presence, and the door is closed.

The butler takes the two large and heavy kettles of extremely hot water from Finny, and carries them into the bathroom, where the gardener can hear their contents being emptied into the tub. Finny gazes fondly at the little figure of the earl deep inside the room, sitting in his chair by the small round table with the glass top. He has a cup of tea before him, and his pistol resting beside the saucer. He is making notes in a notebook, but after a minute, he glances up at Finny, who realises that he has been doing nothing but standing there and staring at his employer. He quickly bows in his unrefined manner and backs out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

***

Ciel has not shut Sebastian out of the bedroom or bathroom since the night the butler scooped him out of the water, spluttering. On the surface, they have resumed their former routine, with the butler doing all that he ought to for his master.

But things have not returned to normal. The child eyes every move he makes, cautiously, suspiciously, whenever he is dressing or undressing him, grooming him, or helping him with his bath, as if constantly wondering what he is doing here at all.

He is watching him now, looking at him in silence as he removes his eye patch, unties his blood-speckled cravat, unbuttons his waistcoat and unhooks his suspenders, then kneels to remove his shoes and knee-high stockings. He remains on his knees while Ciel gets to his feet so that his outer clothing can be unfastened.

Unexpectedly, just as Sebastian's ungloved fingers nimbly undo the last button on the child's shorts, Ciel asks: "Did you enjoy your meal?"

"It was filling enough. Thank you for asking, my lord," the butler replies, easing the shorts past the slim hips, down to the ankles, and off his legs altogether, past one foot at a time. He still wears shorts at an age when other boys are already wearing trousers that reach the ankles, but then the earl is not like other boys.

"How did it taste?" Ciel asks as Sebastian starts undoing the buttons of his shirt.

"A little stale, but apart from that, tolerable."

"Better than I would have tasted?"

"Most unlikely, although I would not know for certain, as I have never sunk my fangs into your flesh."

"You don't know?"

"If you are truly interested, Young Master, I shall do my best to give you a better answer, although it will still be an imperfect one."

Ciel gazes at him, the look in his eyes once again indecipherable.

"With your permission, my lord…"

Sebastian waits a second more for the tacit consent to be given before turning down Ciel's collar and bending his mouth to his neck, exactly where it curves elegantly into his left shoulder. The butler flicks his tongue against the boy's skin, inhales deeply, taking in the taste and scent of him, then trails the tip of his tongue upward along his neck till he reaches the child's left ear.

Ciel shudders, but otherwise remains still.

Sebastian's tongue touches the lobe of the boy's ear once, twice, before he draws back to give his assessment: "You would most probably taste far more delicate and refined than the ghoul. A shade spicier without being overpowering, leaving a lingering bittersweetness as you go down, with a touch of poison. But that is mere extrapolation from the flavour of your flesh and the heat of your blood – initial tastings do not always correspond to final palatability."

"Would that hint of poison be what you thought would make me inedible? What kind of poison would that be?"

"The kind you cannot detect in a medical test," Sebastian answers pleasantly.

"It would not kill you, though?"

"Possibly not, though it is unlikely to be good for me either."

"Still, it won't kill you, so don't you want it? You could have it even now – you only need to tear me open..." Ciel baits him, parting his shirt with his own hands before the butler's face.

He is interrupted by Sebastian's standing up, taking hold of his shoulders, turning him around, and steering him into the bathroom.

"You have had a trying day, my lord," says the butler. "The temperature of the bathwater has just fallen to the perfect level, and it is time for you to soak in it before it cools any further."

He promptly slips off the child's shirt and drawers and hands him into the bath. Ciel lowers himself into the water up to his chin, rests the back of his head against the rim of the tub, and closes his eyes. He seems to immediately forget Sebastian's presence, and the exchange they have just had. He does not react either when the butler reaches into the water and lifts his left hand to scrub his fingernails with the small nail brush. But when Sebastian goes around to the other side of the tub and works on his right hand, he remarks: "I still smell the grease from the pistol."

"Yes, Young Master," the devil replies. "The pistol grease and gunpowder have been on your right hand all evening, since you drew the gun and shot me."

Ciel cracks his right eye open and studies the hole in the butler's shirt which is even more obvious now that he has removed his coat. "Where's the bullet?" he asks.

"I ejected it from my body and dropped it into my coat pocket as we made our way from the abandoned building to the carriage."

"That shirt will need replacing."

"It will indeed."

"Take the money out of my personal expense account," the boy murmurs.

"Certainly, sir."

"And earn your keep better by getting that damned grease off my fingers. I can still feel it."

"Yes, of course."

Sebastian works the nail brush more briskly, but Ciel rubs his thumb against his palm and frowns. "It's still there."

"Grease takes time to come off, Young Master. I can fetch some lemon juice from the kitchen if you like–"

"Lick it off. It can't taste much worse than the ghoul – or sulphur and brimstone for that matter – and you deserve little better as you've just declined the supper I offered you."

"If it pleases you, my lord," Sebastian answers evenly, before slipping his master's thumb into his mouth and cleaning the grease off the skin with his tongue, cat-like.

Ciel has both his eyes open now. He is thinking of how his hound – the real hound named Sebastian who was killed alongside his parents, and whom he named his devil after – used to lick his hands clean of any traces of food that might have been on them. This is different. And different too from when he licks melted chocolate off his own digits. He watches intently as the butler moves on to his index finger and laves every bit of oil off it. It feels a little ticklish.

He finds it curious that this Sebastian does not move to his middle digit next, but instead encloses his little finger with his lips and cleans that, then his ring finger, and after the barest of pauses, licks every last trace of the partly tacky, partly slippery residue from the middle finger before finishing off by cleaning the palm like a large, black-haired cat eating out of his hand.

"There, it's done, Young Master," Sebastian says with a smile that briefly shows the very tips of his teeth – not his fangs. The teeth look perfectly white. He has somehow managed not to taint them with a single spot of grease.

The butler wets a washcloth in the bathwater and wipes Ciel's right hand thoroughly before returning his arm to the warmth of the tub, while Ciel ponders how Sebastian skipped to his last finger before working his way back. The boy is experienced and old before his time in a multitude of ways, but very much a sheltered child in others. So it takes a few seconds before it dawns on him that middle fingers are often used in vulgar gestures by the crude men he sometimes encounters in the course of his underworld work. Another second is needed before it twigs that Sebastian is obviously conscious of the significance of the uses that digit might be put to in non-verbal communications, and may not necessarily have been thinking about food, or dogs, when running his tongue over his hand.

"Would your lordship like the same treatment for your toes?" Sebastian asks, making Ciel jump, for he has taken his eyes off the butler for just one second while thinking about crude men and appendages, and has failed to notice that the devil has moved round to the far end of the tub.

"No," the boy snaps, feeling embarrassed enough to draw his feet back an inch or two towards his hips. "Don't be absurd. I did not hold the pistol with my feet, did I?"

"Of course not," Sebastian replies readily. "So it shall be the usual scrubbing with the nail brush then?"

Ciel says nothing, but does not resist as his butler reaches into the water to lift his left foot, then his right, to scrub the toenails and soles until they are perfectly pink and clean.

Sebastian is now at the head of the tub again, saying: "Please sit up so that I can wash your back, Young Master."

He complies, learning forward and meditatively running his hands over his own knees and shins as Sebastian works the washcloth firmly over his shoulders and shoulder blades, and down his spine. That done, Ciel reaches for the transparent bar of Pears soap and takes over the washing of the rest of his body, as he normally does, while Sebastian goes about gathering up his shed garments from the floor of the bathroom and the bedroom.

When the earl is done cleaning himself, the butler returns to the bathroom, hands him out of the bath, and towels him dry. He then wraps him in a thick bathrobe and ushers him back into the bedroom. Clean drawers and a fresh nightshirt go over his body, and he is ready to climb into bed.

On nights when he is not too sleepy or tired, he reads a little while Sebastian takes the soiled clothing downstairs and drains the bath. Tonight, he does not pick up the book of poetry on his nightstand, but instead goes over the notes he has made in his notebook. When Sebastian returns from the laundry room and kitchen to look in on him, he is still reading what he has recorded about the night's events.

"I wonder if she tamed the succubus all by herself," the earl thinks aloud, when the butler enters the room.

Sebastian sets the candelabra on top of the cabinet just inside the door and approaches the bed. "It is very likely that someone taught her how to do it, or did it for her once and left her to maintain control over the creature after that. What we know of Lady Susan Rothstein's background suggests that she had an interest in the occult, but not much skill with it. She was born to the very rich and respectable Eliot family in Kent, and lived sixteen years without a hint of scandal. But she married a German aristocrat in 1820 and travelled with her husband around the Continent. That was when people with interests very different from her birth family's entered her circle. It is believed that she acquired an obsession with preserving her youth from some of her new friends. Perhaps her teacher still lives, feeding off other people more discreetly than his or her protégé did."

"If that person tries to make trouble in England, I won't sit by quietly."

"Of course, my lord. But tonight, you must rest," he tells him, taking the notebook from him and placing it on the nightstand beside the silk eye patch. "You have had a long and wearying day."

Ciel offers no resistance to having his notebook put aside, although he makes no move either to burrow down under the covers.

Sebastian regards him for a second, then says: "I had planned to give you this tomorrow, when you would be rested and refreshed, but as you are obviously not very sleepy, perhaps you would like to have it now."

He slips something out of his waistcoat pocket and places it in the boy's hand. It is his blue diamond ring, the one presumed lost to the waters after it was given it away like a bauble, just so that he could return to London.

Ciel stares at the jewel and examines the engraving on the inside of the band. It is the very same ring, not a replacement like the items in the manor, or like his covenant with the devil.

"How did you find this?" he asks. His voice is calm, almost uninterested, but the brightening of his eyes betrays his pleasure at holding the family stone in his hands again.

"What kind of butler would I be to Lord Phantomhive if I could not recover the ring he discarded?" Sebastian remarks rhetorically. "It took me a little more time than I needed to restore the manor, but it was not impossible."

The butler takes up the ring again and slips it over the thumb of Ciel's left hand. It does not sit as easily on the thumb as it used to, yet it is undoubtedly the same piece of jewellery.

"It appears, my lord, that you have grown just a little," the butler observes. "You may require a longer walking stick very soon if you keep this up."

He moves the ring to Ciel's index finger, but it is slightly loose. He shifts it then to the middle digit, and it sits better there. But Ciel slips it off almost immediately and puts it back on his thumb. "I like it right here," the earl says, contemplating the deep blue shade of the stone, which matches but does not surpass the blue of his eyes.

"As you wish, Young Master," Sebastian says easily. "Wherever you choose to wear it, would you not agree that it makes a far better ornament for your fingers than a devil's mouth?"

Ciel flushes, but Sebastian blows out the candle in the glass lamp on the nightstand, and tucks him in, drawing the covers up to his shoulders.

"Good night, Young Master."

The butler crosses the room, picks up the candelabra, and closes the door behind him as he leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some minute degree of consistency, I nearly always keep to the guideline of following the English-language manga spellings of character names in all my stories. For better or for worse, Yen Press has chosen to render the name of the cook (which I see written as "Ba-ru-do-ro-i" in the Japanese version of the manga) as "Baldroy" or "Baldo", instead of what may be a more correct Bardroy or Bard; and the housemaid "Mey-Rin" instead of the possibly more correct "Maylene".
> 
> I am keeping to the spellings offered in the English version of the manga rather than attempting to second-guess the translators. Even historical characters like Frederick Abberline are rather casually named "Fred" in the manga, and I will keep to that for consistency despite my preference for the full "Frederick".
> 
> I apologise if my adherence to that guideline upsets anyone who may read this piece of fanfiction.
> 
>  **Additional note:** I choose to remain vague in this story about the anime's take on the fate of Queen Victoria. I do in fact prefer the way the manga continues to keep the original queen as a character, and am leaning towards crafting a world in this story in which the queen had never been involved in Ash's/Angela's schemes.


	5. Scheme

Ciel knows that he is dreaming, but he cannot get out of the dream. It is horribly real while he is trapped in it. It has been some time since he has had nightmares about his parents' murders and his own abduction and torture. But he is experiencing one now, with disturbing new elements that were never there in reality, or in previous dreams.

The cage he is imprisoned in is filling up with blood – a sea of blood – he cannot get his head above the liquid... he will drown, but the terror he feels in that nightmare hails from not knowing whose blood it is. For reasons incomprehensible, he is frantic to discover if the blood he is up to his chin in is his own, or someone else's... but there isn't time to know... he clutches at the cage bars, gasping for one last breath of air, looking up into the impassive face of a devil who makes no move to help him, and then–

Then he is clutching at his gun concealed beneath his coat to assure himself it is there as he races into the unused workhouse after Lady Susan Rothstein. A lady like her travels everywhere by carriage, but they have lured her out on foot after delivering a simple note to her house in the afternoon, which reads: "Susan Eliot, you left something of importance behind at your last murder."

She realises her stupidity the moment she finds them waiting for her – knows she should not have come out here like this. But it is too late. Even the oldest and most cunning of foxes can make tactical errors when surprised by hounds. She has been cornered by two of them, a watchdog of the queen, and a devil playing at canine faithfulness.

She whips out her concealed blade, and lunges at Ciel. Ciel is both appalled and not at all surprised to see that she has thrust it through his chest. He will be an invalid for life with such an injury, but Sebastian stands there smiling beatifically down at him. There is nothing to be done, other than to take his gun, lift it to his own head, and pull the trigger–

Suddenly, he is with Lizzie, and they are small children again, playing on the lawn with Sebastian the great black hound. He is deliriously happy – so happy that he wants to weep for not having felt such joy for so many years. But Lizzie and the dog recede into the distance before his eyes, as he feels a shadow looming over him from behind. He does not need to turn around to know that it is Sebastian the devil, as he hears him speak the words: "You will taste so much better now, little one."

He thinks to himself as he sees Lizzie and the hound drift further and further from him: _No, no, no, no, no, this is not the time to die – not now, not here! No!_

Blinding white light hits him, and he knows even before he moves that he is no longer dreaming, but awake because Sebastian has parted the curtains in his bedroom to let the morning light in. The town house is smaller than the manor, and everything is so much closer to the windows. His eyes fly open. He blinks into the sunlight, struggling to keep his vision focused on the silhouette of the butler. _No dramatics this morning,_ he tells himself. _No terror or overreaction. Calm yourself._

He has slept with his blue diamond ring on; small wonder he has had nightmares. But his butler need not know. If he acts normally, he will not realise...

"Bad dreams, Young Master?" Sebastian asks smoothly.

Damn him.

"This Sencha variety of green tea fresh from Japan will soothe you," the demon says, pouring out a cup. "It is just hot enough to be drunk, for such tea cannot be put into boiling water."

Ciel forces his hands not to shake as he takes the saucer and teacup from Sebastian. He drinks. It is good, and calms him as he takes his second sip, then a third. When he feels steadier, he rises and relieves himself in the bathroom before returning to the bedroom, where he stands by the dresser. There, Sebastian pours a steady stream of water from the pure white porcelain jug into the matching basin to let him wash his hands and face, then hands him the china mug and the bone-handled bristle brush so that he can clean his teeth.

It is back to the bed again, to sit at the edge of the mattress while Sebastian slips off his nightshirt and drawers and dresses him. The butler's hair falls forward as he bends to buckle his master's shoes. Ciel watches the black locks of hair hanging there between them, hiding Sebastian's eyes from him.

As if aware that he is looking at his over-long fringe, Sebastian asks: "May I cut my hair, Young Master? It has grown too long for my liking."

It has never occurred to Ciel that Sebastian might have preferences regarding the length of his hair.

"Our new agreement does not forbid you to alter the details of your appearance," he answers curtly. "I do not know why you are asking my permission for something so trifling."

"I ask out of courtesy, my lord," Sebastian replies lightly. "For three years you forbade so much as a hair on my head to be trimmed without your consent. I feared you would be displeased if I appeared before you with shorter locks."

"As long as your appearance does not embarrass the reputation of the Phantomhive estate, I care not what you do with your hair," Ciel mutters. "And what have you ever cared about my displeasure?"

"Very good, sir."

"Stop that polite nonsense," the earl snaps. "What is all this 'Very good, sir' rubbish you have been doling out for days?"

"Would you rather I be rude to you, Young Master? I thought that under the new contract, you would want new treatment. You did say so when we discussed the detailed terms..."

"Enough of the rubbish," Ciel growls, remembering with embarrassment that on the island, while discussing the detailed terms of the contract, he had indeed uttered words suggesting that if he was to put up with Sebastian for five more years, he would demand better service. Except that he had thought of it at the time as a way to punish the butler by making his existence unpleasant for those five years. But what, truly, is the purpose of all this petty behaviour when the creature he is trying to torment will live without him for centuries more, and might betray him at any moment now, as easily as he discarded the first contract...?

"Young Master, what do you want from me?" Sebastian asks, unexpectedly, looking into his face.

Ciel feels the seed of his anger burning, expanding into a kernel of white-hot resentment. " _I'm_ the one who asked _you_ that on that night!" he bites out the words. "How dare you turn the question on _me_ when–"

He feels incapable of facing the day ahead; he is tired even before it has begun. But precisely because he feels as if it would kill him to leave his bedroom to face what waits for him, he compels himself to stand up and walk across the floor.

"Young Master," Sebastian says, not having moved from the bedside even when the earl has almost reached the door.

He could simply reach for the doorknob and let himself out. But no... he now realises why Sebastian is calling to him, for he has not put his eye patch on yet, and cannot face the world.

The butler walks up to him, bends down so their faces are level, and cups his right cheek in one gloved hand as he says: "My lord, this symbol in your eye was once a brand that marked your soul as one that God could no longer touch if I refused to yield it. But now, it marks you as the one with the power to continue or end our contract. I cannot break it without your consent. Dreams are only dreams – they echo what hidden or open feelings you have within yourself, and no more. Prophetic dreams such as those your Good Book is filled with have not occurred in this land for a very long time now."

"It is hardly 'my' Good Book," Ciel retorts, irked that his feelings are so transparent to his butler even when he attempts to hide them. "In any case, such dreams as I have belong to no Good Book."

Sebastian slips the silk over his eye and knots the ribbon that holds the patch in place. He gazes at his master thoughtfully, before asking: "What makes it so hard for you to live?"

"There is nothing to live for. You know that."

"What is lost can never be recovered. But other things were never lost, and new treasures have been found. Why is it so hard to survive for the new world you could build? Could it be _this_ that makes your life so hard to live out?"

As he says ' _this'_ , Sebastian reaches for his master's hand and adjusts the blue diamond ring on his thumb, which has turned inward so the stone rests against Ciel's palm.

"Do you remember, Young Master, what else we agreed to? We agreed that I would hone you into all that you were capable of becoming. It is my desire to groom a prize-winning horse that is pleasing to watch, not a shackled nag that becomes more of an eyesore as each day passes."

He tweaks the eye patch as he says the latter words, lifting the silk briefly to peek at the pentagram in the earl's iris. Ciel slaps his hand away and growls: "Are you trying to be funny?"

"Oh, was it not humour and irreverence that you wanted from me, my lord? What a dreadful mistake on my part." He sounds not at all sincere, and Ciel glares at him until he continues: "If you are to be all that you could be, then that ring which is the collar binding you to the royal throne needs to be loosened."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that it is time for you to step out of the shadows and bring whatever you may think of as light into your existence. To do that most smoothly, I would advise starting with the next monarch of England."

"I beg your pardon?" Ciel asks, not understanding what Sebastian is saying.

"I kept my ears open last night, even while hunting ghouls and licking up grease. Something _else_ of a distasteful nature has occurred in this city, and it will soon grow out of hand unless you step in. You may also be able at the same time to take action to improve your own lot."

"Explain," the earl commands, trying not to redden at the allusion to that unorthodox cleansing of his hand.

"I shall do so once you hear the facts from the appropriate parties. You will be hearing from at least one of them very soon. I am certain, Young Master, that you can expect a visitor to the town house today."

***

Lord Arthur Randall, Commissioner of Scotland Yard, has no love for the Phantomhive boy. However, he has come to terms with the necessity of the earl's existence. The need to acknowledge that shift in his attitude, however, has come sooner than he likes, thanks to a scandal in the making involving His Royal Highness the crown prince. Unfortunately, some men from Scotland Yard have become entangled in the mess, dragging the Commissioner into reluctant action.

Decades of waiting to inherit the throne from his long-lived mother, a love for women, gambling and fashion, and limitless ease and wealth have made Prince Edward, future king of England, a regular source of embarrassment to the rest of the royal family. His reputation in the public eye has, however, improved in recent years, and the common people are starting to think better of him. But if this latest trouble blows up, it may turn the winds in the other direction again.

The gambling and prostitution murk the prince has become mixed up in this time has turned extremely distasteful, not least because a woman of low repute at the scene has died, ostensibly from drinking too much liquor in one sitting. In fact, she is said to have fallen over dead, after vomiting suddenly and copiously, at the very feet of the prince.

The brewing scandal has dragged a few of Scotland Yard's best into the mud. They have not been ensnared by vice, but by foolish loyalty to the Prince of Wales. It is therefore turning into a potential embarrassment to the Yard. And it _will_ be an embarrassment once the news breaks – unless the Phantomhive Earl can save the Yard's face at the same time as he cleans up the mess for the royal establishment.

So it is with a sense of rare humility that Lord Randall pays a visit to the town house where he knows the earl is still in residence. They may both be addressed as "Lord", but Randall is only a baron who rose to his title from a simple knighthood after years of hard work and devotion to the crown, while the Phantomhive child is an earl by birth – at least two ranks of the peerage above him, and countless degrees beyond him by sheer virtue of his bloodline. To sweeten the bitterness of requesting help from the precocious, one-eyed boy, he brings some information which he believes will be news to his ears.

"Lord Phantomhive," the Commissioner says, when he is shown by an odd young man with pins in his hair into the presence of the master and his black-clad man in the dining room, where Ciel is having his breakfast.

The earl courteously invites Lord Randall to join him. Randall sits down, two seats away, but declines toast or tea.

"Thank you, but I have eaten more than my fill at home," Randall states, holding his hand up to stop the butler from pouring out a cup for him. "I have only come for a short visit, to give you some information that may be of interest to you."

"Oh?" Ciel asks, picking up his tastefully rose-patterned teacup and giving the Commissioner a sly glance. "Did you not come to ask if I could extract your detectives from the mess growing over in the west of Chelsea?"

Lord Randall colours, and his whiskers bristle. He has not thought that the earl would hear of the incident so quickly. But the boy has hit the nail on the head, and he, Randall, is hardly in a position to be haughty.

He therefore replies honestly: "I did come to request your help in that department – but not because I have any desire stemming from pride or corruption to cover up what has happened. I am making the request because the men involved are good, _decent_ men, who foolishly became entangled by their attempts to protect what remains of the prince's reputation – exactly what the previous two Phantomhive earls have also been responsible for doing over the years at the queen's request. At the same time, I do have interesting information for you."

To the earl's credit, he puts his teacup down, blinks the cheeky look out of his exposed eye, and gives Lord Randall his full attention. Perhaps he is sobered by the recent memory of the Commissioner's kind-hearted right-hand man, Fred Abberline, who died shielding him.

"I would not leave your men in the mud while paving an exit for His Royal Highness to emerge from smelling of roses, Lord Randall," Ciel says evenly. "What can you tell me about why this incident promises to become publicly known?"

"That is thanks to the Easton brothers."

"The stupid, fashionable pair who have been much in the prince's company of late, their faces all over the newspapers?" Ciel asks, distaste in his voice.

"Yes. In the chaos that erupted once it was determined that the girl was dead, they saw His Highness into his unmarked carriage, then called three of my men to deal with the matter quietly. Unfortunately, there was a newspaper reporter outside, hidden in another house whose scullery maid he was friendly with. We were later to learn that he observed the prince's hurried departure, and waited to see what else would happen. What he saw was my men turning up shortly after, and at the request of the Easton brothers, carrying out the wrapped-up body to be placed somewhere else and later 'found'. He stepped outside to sketch the scene, was spotted, and ran. The Easton brothers caught him, knocked him unconscious, and dragged him away. The scullery maid ran out into the road, screaming that the police were disposing of the body of someone murdered by the crown prince."

Ciel looks at Lord Randall as if he thinks he has lost his mind. "Commissioner," says the earl. "It seems to me that it must already be very publicly known."

"Not quite," the Commissioner snarls. "The Easton pair also snatched the scullery maid off the street, gagged her, and bundled her into a carriage, leaving my men in the street with the prostitute's body. Two policemen patrolling the streets not far away had come running at the sound of the maid's screams, and failing to recognise my men right away, arrested them for the murder of the prostitute."

It seems to Randall that the butler has a smirk on his face, but when he looks again, the man's countenance seems perfectly sober.

"Then what happened?" Ciel asks.

"The brothers sent a message to the prince at the palace, and told him that they had the maid locked up in one of their houses, but the reporter had died from being hit on the head. They said they could keep the girl quiet if he paid her a large sum of money to disappear and start a new life elsewhere. His Highness was horrified by what they told him of the reporter's death, and in a panic agreed to hand over the money at once. But the brothers sent to him again later in the evening, telling him that they would need more money to silence the policemen and my officers as well. He handed over another sum, but immediately after, considered the matter in a calmer frame of mind and summoned me to the palace to tell me all that had happened. For such an arrogant prince, he was frightened."

"Why did he not send me an urgent message?" Ciel asks. "He knows that is what the queen would have done were she here."

"His Highness believes the Phantomhive estate to be loyal only to the queen, but not to him. He trusts in my discretion, and turned to me once he began to think that he was being blackmailed for money by his Easton friends."

"Which he obviously is. They are probably in league with the scullery maid, and with the reporter, who is most likely very much alive."

"Undoubtedly. But I cannot prove all that using normal processes without blowing everything up and scattering the filth into the open. Even if the Easton brothers are blamed, they are certain to shout out the prince's participation in the unseemly activities of the evening, and His Highness' reputation will be sullied again when it was beginning to improve. My men too will be dragged through the grime. We can explain the facts of the case and the need for secrecy concerning the prince to the rest of the police officers who are involved, but we will _not_ be able to explain away a supposed attempt to bribe their fellow officers into silence."

"I see. Very well, I shall do all that I can," Ciel says.

"I am grateful," says the Commissioner. It costs him something to be this polite to the child, but things have changed...

"What is the other information you have for me?" Ciel asks.

"It relates to the matter of Lady Susan Rothstein."

"Oh?" he is immediately interested.

Lord Randall explains: "When I learnt more of the facts about Lady Susan's true age and nature, I began looking into old police documents. Not many such papers have survived fires and floods over the years, but a few dating from fifty to sixty years ago record mysteriously shrivelled corpses found in London. The difference between those cases and these recent ones is that the dead people from the older cases were all themselves murderers of one sort or another, or rapists. No one particularly minded that they were dead. The condition in which their bodies were found was barely even documented in some cases, having been hastily attributed to unusual weather conditions, or limestone surroundings, or damage from a source of heat. Nobody cared to waste time investigating the deaths of men who were violators and mutilators of women, or murderers of good people."

"Lady Susan could have been responsible if she was in London."

"She was not, my lord," says the butler, speaking up for the first time since Randall's arrival. "Lady Susan was on the Continent at the time, and certainly did not pay a ten-year visit to England, nor is there any sign that she re-entered England at all until two months ago."

Randall deeply dislikes the butler – something about him is most suspicious – but there is no denying the man's efficiency.

"So someone else – perhaps the one who taught her how to control succubi – was responsible."

"Perhaps, my lord."

Randall interjects: "It may also interest you to know that there was a survivor."

Ciel's eye widens. "Who?"

"This man," says Randall, pushing over a piece of paper with a name and address, and more written on it. "He told the police fifty years ago that he had been attacked by a ghoul controlled by a young man with silver hair. He said that the man stopped the attack after a few minutes, and apologised profusely. The police at the station he went to dismissed his rantings as those of a drunken man, and threw him out, although they recorded his name and address to guard against his making trouble in the future. But one of the young constables at the station remembered his words. He is now a retired detective inspector, and when informed of the matter of Lady Susan Rothstein, he told me all he recalled of the supposedly mad report, dug up the man's name and address, and handed the information to me. I do not know if this person still lives there, or lives at all, but that is for you to find out. As far as my duty goes, this case is closed."

"I see," Ciel says thoughtfully.

"That is the news I had for you," Lord Randall announces, getting to his feet. "I hope you will find the information useful for whatever purposes you have."

The butler opens the door of the dining room for him. Before he steps into the hallway, where the odd young man with the hairpins waits with his hat and greatcoat, the Commissioner pauses and turns around, filling the doorway in a bearish manner.

"Lord Phantomhive," he says, with a look behind his eyeglasses that suggests he is not certain about the wisdom of saying the next words he will speak. "I have never made a secret of disliking what you stand for. I have always believed as a private individual that no one, of _any_ birth, ought to be above the law. I have considered the work you and your ancestors have done as dark work that helps those in the highest of places to remain beyond that law. But as a Commissioner, I have come through recent events to understand that the work you carry out is required for the stability and peace of this kingdom. For reasons beyond my personal understanding, Abberline regarded you as worth defending with what pathetic influence he had. I do not understand his motives, but I respect his conviction. He may have been a fool, but he was an honourable man of good heart. I still do not approve of what you stand for, but I wish to say here that I accept the necessity of your existence. Good day to you."

He walks down the hallway with a firm and resounding tread, takes his coat and hat from Finnian, and leaves the house.

"Hmm," Ciel mutters casually once Randall is out of his house. "Any more than that and he would have been embracing me."

He speaks as if he does not care, but it is to cover up his reaction to the mention of Abberline, and the tell-tale signs of it in his left eye do not escape Sebastian.

"Young Master," says the butler, after he has closed the dining room door. "You now have two cases to follow up. The matter of the ghoul, and the matter of the attempts to deceive and blackmail the Prince of Wales."

"I suppose the prince's tasteless choice of associates is the thing that you believe will loosen the grip of the throne on my collar?" Ciel asks, glancing at Sebastian.

"I do."

"Well? You have the liberty in this new covenant to no longer be a chess piece moved purely by me, obeying my orders to the letter, but one who would take all necessary action to achieve our joint objectives. So don't just stand there like a block of wood."

"Then you are in need of my advice?" Sebastian asks with a smile.

"Put it any way you please," the earl grumbles.

"Very well, Young Master. This is what you must do now..."

***

The vicar of the church south of the Thames is still wondering if the events of last night were no more than a bad dream when he wakes up in the morning. Tomkin the ginger cat is sullen and wary, however, whereas the other cats who were not with him are behaving normally. That confirms that something very strange occurred as he was leaving the church and Tomkin greeted him in the churchyard. But try as he might, he cannot fully comprehend what took place.

The phantom pursuing him and the cat, the one-eyed child with the aristocratic accent, the more-than-human creature the child called his butler...

Poor John Jarvis cannot wrap his mind around it all.

As he is making himself a cup of English tea to settle his nerves, however, a sharp knock at his door almost makes him drop the kettle. He steadies his hand, sets the kettle back down carefully on the stove, and hurries to the door of his small house, which stands within the same plot of land as the church building.

Perhaps it is someone from his parish, in need of urgent prayer or assistance because a family member has taken ill, or is in other trouble.

"Yes?" the vicar says, opening the door expecting to see anyone from a child from one of the houses down the road, to a maid from one of the more well-off families two streets away.

But the person he sees on his doorstep is an elegantly dressed man with green eyes and gleaming silver hair – not the silver strands of the elderly, but shining locks like those painted in scenes from children's tales of fairies, elves, and brownies. Behind this expensively dressed apparition is another man, a tall one with dark hair and a blank expression in his hazel eyes, attired more like a gentleman-servant would be.

"Are you the vicar of this church, Mr John Jarvis?" asks the elf-like man. He looks young and beautiful, but his green eyes the colour of the seas off Cornwall appear to contain worlds of knowledge far beyond the realm of mere mortals.

"I am, sir. What can I help you with?" the vicar asks, opening his door a little wider out of politeness, although the elegant man and his servant give him a sense of unease.

"Forgive me for disturbing you so early in the morning," says the silver-haired man pleasantly. Behind the pleasantness, the vicar thinks he detects urgency. "I must, however, ask if you encountered anything out of the ordinary here last night."

"I did, as a matter of fact," Mr Jarvis answers honestly. "However, I do not think you would believe me if I told you what it was."

"Try me," says the man with a serious smile.

"Well, I was attacked by something I cannot name – some manner of spirit. But I was saved by a butler who was with a one-eyed child. The butler apparently... _ate_ the spirit." There. He has said it, it is out of his mouth, and has somehow become more real for having been spoken.

The silver-haired man turns to look at the hazel-eyed one, and asks him: "Does that tally with what you learnt, Carsten?"

The one addressed as Carsten nods and says in a strangely tranquil voice: "Yes, Master. The traces of the succubus ended in the churchyard, and I detected traces of another of my kind here as well."

"That is it, then. The thing is dead," the silver-haired man states, thoughtfully, more to himself than to his companion or the vicar. But seeming to remember that other people are with him, he makes eye-contact again with the vicar and says to him: "Thank you, Mr Jarvis. I am more pleased than I can say that you were not harmed by the creature. That was all I needed to know. Good morning to you."

He is about to leave when the vicar asks: "Sir, do you know the people who saved me last night? If I could thank them..."

"Do I know them? No," says the elf-like creature, to the disappointment of the vicar. But in the next moment, he adds: "However, I believe I know _who_ they are. I think that the child you saw last night was the Earl of Phantomhive."

"Oh, I see," says the vicar, pleased to have obtained a name, or rather a title, from the man, although it means nothing to him at this time. "And what might your name be, sir, if I might ask?"

"I?" the man remarked, looking at the vicar, sizing him up, determining if he ought to bestow him with the knowledge of his name, before he seems to decide that it matters little either way. "I am Percival Ambrose."

* * *


	6. Command

Millie Clarke giggles as her supposedly dead lover kisses her neck and fiddles with her short stays. He should not be having so much difficulty with them, for these stays are only made of stiff fabric, not bone. All they do is keep her simple dress and figure neat and decent without preventing her from getting down on her hands and knees to scrub and scour, and haul all sorts of things about, as her job demands.

She giggles because she is thinking of how she will no longer have to do the miserable work that pays her a sorry ten pounds a year, and often sees her being told off by everyone in the kitchen who is above her. And everybody _is_ above her. Or _was_. Because very soon now, she will be far away from here and able to afford maids of her own. She will no longer need to wear these short stays, but can choose to be laced up into those fancy, incredibly uncomfortable full stays if she wants, the ones that make ladies' figures look so prettily shaped under their fabulous gowns.

 _I'd look grand in one o' them dresses, I would,_ she thinks, for she is a statuesque girl, tall and fair and certainly good-looking enough to be a parlour maid, except she has plenty of cheek, and her betters don't like that in upstairs servants.

Her lover seems happy enough to fondle her now, although she knows that he has long fancied himself a man who could woo a parlour maid, or even a lady's maid. _Just think o' that – a lady's maid! What a funny man!_ Millie snorts inwardly. In fact, Millie sometimes even believes that Stephen thinks he could snare a proper lady from a middling-respectable sort of household.

 _Silly chap,_ Millie laughs to herself. _Weren't no lady would look at the likes of him!_

Some newspaper reporters might be proper gentlemen, with university backgrounds and good families and such, Millie knows, but Stephen Chapman is not one of them. He is just a man from a family nobody ever heard of, with just enough learning to let him do the work he does for the scandal sheets and the Sunday titles, but little else.

 _Now I'm fancy enough for 'im, am I?_ she thinks. She experiences a moment's resentment that it takes the promise of a large sum of money to have him pay full attention only to her, but the moment passes quickly enough, for she is a girl who does not think too deeply about things.

"Get these off," Chapman says to her, somewhat roughly, tugging at a stubborn knot in her stays. But she likes that, Millie does – a bit of roughness in bed has always appealed to her.

He gropes her thighs through her drawers, and his hands quickly make their way up to her crotch, where he can easily slip his fingers through to her bare skin, for the two halves of her drawers only overlap there and are not stitched together. Millie has seen some new drawer fashions which have the seam completely sewn up, so that a girl needs to completely pull down the undergarment just to use the chamberpot, but in her line of work, that sort of fussing with clothing when one is constantly being hurried to do this or that is simply impossible.

Her lover's fingers swiftly find what they want and slip inside her as a prelude to much, much more to come. Millie gasps, giggles again, then gives in to the urges of her body – with which she is most familiar, because a pretty girl like her isn't left alone much by delivery boys and footmen, and she has worked in two ill-run households where servants as grand as butlers would coax her into their beds. She has even (she whispers this to herself, in her mind, as if she were telling a friend a secret) had a gentleman or two. Oh yes, _gentlemen_. Not would-be ones like Mr Chapman, but _real_ gentlemen, mind.

As her bloke mounts her and pushes his swollen staff inside her eager, wet sheath while his hands free her breasts from their restraints, she cries out and clutches his back, pleased with the fast, passionate coupling. She could stay in this big house for days more, she thinks. It may be cold, because they are not allowed to light a fire, but the bedcovers are soft and thick and warm, and they have shawls and coats. Scarcely anyone knows they are here – the Easton brothers have left it looking like an empty house, with some cured meats, good bread and fruit for them to eat. All will be well as long as they do not venture out of doors for the next few days.

 _No one else knows we're here... no one else knows a thing... we can go on and on like this in this 'normous, grand bed for ages!_ Millie thinks as Stephen Chapman thrusts away, driving her towards the heights of pleasure – until she thinks she sees something move in the shadows at the far end of the room. She stiffens.

Her lover thinks she is tensing as she scales towards her climax, and only pounds away faster, but Millie starts to whimper in fear, and very soon she is screaming not with pleasure but in terror as someone – no, _something_ – glides out of the shadows like a bat and swoops down on them.

Chapman turns around too late to react in any sensible way, when Millie's terror finally communicates itself plainly to him.

The last thing they see before they are both rendered senseless is a tall figure in black with eyes that glow like garnets afire, and their fleeting impression of it before they sink into unconsciousness is that it is dressed very like a butler, but surely no butler from anywhere other than hell ever moved in so inhuman a manner.

***

"Even if he suspects us, he'll do nothing if he wants none of the tales we could tell reaching the queen's ears," George Easton declares confidently to his brother, as he straightens his stiff white jacket before settling into the cushioned semi-comfort of the new, French-style couch that has just been moved into their withdrawing room in their London house. He is the older and braver of the two, with a soft, plump figure that makes him appear benign – until one looks closely into his watery blue eyes and sees their cold, avaricious gleam.

The Prince of Wales has never looked too closely, having been taken in by his easy, jovial air, and the stoutness of body that mirrors the prince's own.

Robert Easton, dressed in pristine white like his brother, does not share the elder one's confidence. As tall as his sibling, but significantly slimmer of build, he is of a more nervous disposition. In society, that nervousness transforms into a self-deprecating humour that entertains his associates; in private, he is quieter and has a tendency to tap his feet and fingers.

"Are you sure?" he asks, massaging the back of his left hand, which is still slightly bruised from the mock-scuffle with Millie Clarke. "What if he learns the truth? Even if he does nothing, he'll hold it against us – and he'll soon be King of England!"

"Nonsense!" George dismisses his concerns. "The old bat will live for a hundred years more!"

"The 'old bat' has been frail since her fall; His Highness will be king sooner than you might think," Robert returns.

"When that comes to pass, we'll be making fortunes by the day out in the East, and he won't bother to rake up old grudges," George declares. "What we must do now is to pay off all our gaming debts, and obtain the prince's backing to be awarded the exclusive contract we need. He _will_ give us his backing, if he knows what's best for his reputation."

"I don't know, George. What if Millie and her man tattle?"

"They'll remain out of sight for the rest of their lives if they want to keep the money that will be going to them once this matter is settled."

"What if His Highness changes his mind about handing over more money?"

"He'll hand it over quietly," George decides. "His future depends on his staying in his mother's good books. If the mere sound of His Royal Highness' name grows black enough to the ears of the people, it will not be impossible for Her Majesty to change the succession, although he has been crown prince for forty-eight years. She could decide that the crown should pass to _his_ son instead of him, or even to one of her other surviving children. And the prince knows well that if this latest matter becomes publicly known, the queen and the people, who have lately begun to forget the misbehaviour of his younger days, will be convinced that he will never change."

"Still, he is very likely to be king, and I do not know how wise it is to get into the black books of the future ruler of Britain."

"But if this works, we _will_ be ridiculously rich, and living far enough away from here to be mostly forgotten by him, and Mother will be pleased."

"Yes, she will."

Their mother, Sophia Easton, whose family boasts descent from a former Duke of York, unfortunately married a man of great wealth but little breeding. She has often lamented how her worthless sons take after their father's people rather than hers in terms of their weaknesses of character, without having inherited any of his industriousness. If they succeed in this scheme of theirs and raise their family name, perhaps Mother will not think them such disappointments.

As they are considering what their mother might think of their success, a knock sounds at the door of the withdrawing room.

"Enter!" Robert calls out.

Their butler steps into the room to announce: "Sirs, the Earl of Phantomhive has arrived."

The brothers glance at each other.

"The Earl of Phantomhive?" George murmurs. "What could he possibly want with us?"

"Maybe he has come on His Royal Highness' business," Robert suggests uncertainly.

"Surely not. I've never heard the prince speak of employing the earl in any capacity. Is he not a trusted pet of Her Majesty alone?"

"Perhaps while Her Majesty is away at Balmoral, the prince..."

"It hardly matters. He is only a boy. If the prince has asked him to deal with us concerning the third sum of money we have asked for, all the better for us – a little fellow like him will be no trouble for us to intimidate."

"I've heard things about the child..."

"Stupid rumours. I've never believed a word of them," George mutters dismissively. To the butler, he says: "Show His Lordship in."

The butler hurries to do so, and the brothers rise as the young earl enters.

"Lord Phantomhive, how good of you to call on us, despite our never having been introduced to you," George Easton says condescendingly to the slightly built boy with the black silk eye patch.

The brothers have only ever seen the earl at a handful of public events which the queen has graced with her presence. The child may outrank them many times over, but he is an absurdly small boy, and simply cannot be taken seriously. With his fine-china complexion, and clothed in an elaborate, white lace shirt that peeks out from under a perfectly cut black frock coat, he looks like a doll.

"Mr Easton, and Mr Robert Easton," the child greets them in a firm voice, which only makes George Easton want to giggle, for no one so small ought to sound so serious.

"What can we do for you, Lord Phantomhive?"

To the surprise of the Easton brothers, the earl – without being invited to sit – drops with insouciant ease into the elder brother's favourite wingback chair, and interlinks his delicate fingers under his chin as he pierces them both with a single eye in a shade of ocean-deep blue.

"Oh, there's a lot you can do for me," he states coldly. "Let's start with the sums of money His Royal Highness has paid you, and what more he _will_ be paying you."

The brothers immediately find themselves on uncertain ground. They have no idea if the earl is here on behalf of the prince, or behind the prince's back, and thus have not the faintest notion of the best way to respond to his statement.

"You are confused," Ciel smirks. "Allow me to enlighten you. I do not care a whit for the cash you are extorting – what use have I for such tiny sums? What I am interested in is the bigger prize."

"I beg your pardon?" George Easton says with a strained smile. "I am not certain that I understand Your Lordship's..."

Another knock sounds at the door of the withdrawing room, and Robert Easton snaps out: "Not now, Andrews! Leave us alone!"

But their butler calls out in an apologetic voice: "Forgive me, sirs, but there is an Indian man at the door with a servant. He says he is a prince."

In utter disbelief, Robert marches over to the door and pulls it open a few inches, to say to the butler: "For heaven's sake, Andrews – what have we to do with an _Indian prince_?"

"I am sorry, sir, but he says he is here on important business."

"For God's sake, put him in the morning room and tell him to wait! We are engaged in far _more_ important business here than whatever his could be!"

"Yes, sir."

"What _interesting_ associates you have," Ciel remarks ironically, when the door is closed again.

The Easton brothers wonder whether they are imagining it, but the room seems to have grown a shade colder, although they had made a point of closing all the windows earlier.

"Fascinating company you keep," the earl continues with a mocking smile. "Everyone from the crown prince of England to Indian princes, and even reporters and _scullery maids_. Intriguing."

"My lord...?" Robert Easton begins hesitantly.

"Don't play games with me," Ciel says. He has not moved in the armchair, but he suddenly looks different – more menacing, and less doll-like. "I know all about that business in Chelsea. I know the reporter isn't dead, whatever you may have told His Royal Highness."

"What reporter?" the younger Easton laughs nervously.

"I told you not to play games with me. This is but the prelude to the main score. Don't drag this out."

George Easton decides to stop playing dumb. "Phantomhive, what exactly do you want from us?"

"A cut of the profits. I am referring to the big profits, not the petty blackmail."

"Please, you must be more specific," George drawls. "You can hardly expect us to speculate –"

"First of all, answer my question: Did you or did you not, last night, inform His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, that you had accidentally killed a reporter who had attempted to sketch a scene that might compromise His Highness' reputation?"

"And if we did?" George asks.

"If you did, I want to know what the reporter is doing alive."

"Who said he was alive?" George titters.

"Sebastian," intones the child, as if speaking a command.

"Who is Sebastian?" Robert demands, sounding slightly hysterical now.

In a moment, however, it becomes clear to the brothers that the child was not only replying to them, but in fact was summoning the "Sebastian" in question merely by uttering his name. For anxious voices sound beyond the room, as the Eastons' butler is heard protesting indignantly: "What do you imagine you are doing? Who do you think you are? You cannot just come in and do as you please!"

But Andrews' objections are futile, for the door of the withdrawing room opens once again, and a tall, black-clad butler stands there as if blown in by the wind, with the half-dressed, fully trussed-up-and-gagged Millie Clarke and Stephen Chapman held securely in his left and right hands respectively.

"Bloody hell!" Robert gasps, losing whatever self-control he has attempted to maintain up till now.

"So the reporter is _not_ dead," the earl says in an amused voice. "And it seems that the scullery maid was having a good deal of fun with him this morning, until my butler interrupted them. Therefore, I ask that you be so good as to explain to me what you were playing at."

"We didn't mean any harm," George says in placating fashion. "If we had, we would truly have killed him, wouldn't we?"

"I think you left him alive only because your brother has a soft spot for the maid, having once amused himself with her while he was a guest in her former employer's house," Ciel says, examining his nails and seemingly finding a speck of dust on one of them that offends him, for he blows on them. "You knew she fancied the reporter, and sending them away together with what they would regard as a pile of money – after you had paid off your gaming debts, of course – would be one sure way of keeping her happy, and both of them out of the way. If not for that one weakness, I have no doubt that you would have killed them both."

"What do you want from us?" George inquires.

"What I said I wanted. Not the trifling sums of cash you could extort for a short time before His Highness sees the truth of the scam, but the bigger prize. Come now, you know what you're aiming for."

"The tea-trading contract?" Robert spits out frantically, speaking too fast to be shushed in time by his brother.

"Of course. The tea-trading contract. If His Highness knows that the reporter is _not_ dead, he will hardly be so keen to help you with that, will he?" Ciel asks rhetorically.

"What are you asking for?" George demands from between gritted teeth.

"Tell me what you hope to obtain, and I shall tell you what I want from it," Ciel proposes smugly.

"For God's sake," Robert groans. "This is not a fair way to negotiate! We don't know how much will come in, but if our company is given exclusive rights to trade in the white tea that some merchants in China are saying has never been drunk in Europe, there's no telling how much our profit could be."

"I see. Fifty percent, then?"

"Fifty percent!" Robert gasps. "Be reasonable!"

"Pray tell me what you would consider reasonable."

"One percent!"

"Ridiculous," Ciel scoffs. "What kind of men am I dealing with? I thought you were more determined to succeed than that. I thought you made such _elaborate_ plans to improve your chances of success. Am I or am I not correct in saying that you arranged with the scullery maid Millie Clarke, and the newspaper reporter Stephen Chapman, to create a scene when you called in detectives from Scotland Yard to deal with the prostitute who died in the house at which His Royal Highness was a guest?"

"What if you are correct?" George asks warily, wondering again why the room feels so oddly cold – he is certain that he and Robert had closed all the windows earlier.

"Answer me: Did you do all that?" Ciel asks.

"Yes!" George snaps impatiently, reluctantly.

"Did you or did you not then tell His Royal Highness that Stephen Chapman was dead from having been hit over the head, and did you not then tell His Royal Highness that he could keep the maid quiet by paying her a sum of two thousand pounds?"

"We did," George hisses. "What of it?"

"You had not planned for the detectives to be arrested by their fellow police officers, but when you saw that that had happened, you took the opportunity to ask His Royal Highness for a further sum of three thousand pounds to be paid as a bribe for the officers' silence, am I correct?"

"Yes," George rumbles.

"But in fact the bribe was never paid, for you knew that the officers would be discreet concerning the Prince of Wales once they learnt what had really happened. Where was the sum of three thousand pounds meant to go, then, once you had drawn the money from the bank with the prince's orders?"

"We would have used it to pay off our gaming debts, and kept the rest for ourselves," Robert reveals.

"Dear me, where is all the famed wealth of the Eastons?" Ciel mocks. "Why would you even need to extort money from the Prince of Wales?"

"Our mother is no longer willing to support those of our habits which she detests," George admits.

"Ah. But even those thousands of pounds would not be enough to satisfy you, would they?" Ciel asks. "That is where the tea-trading contract comes in – the real prize. Am I right to say that with this little business supposedly being a secret between you and the prince, you knew that His Royal Highness would then support your bid to win the business, and that his backing would almost certainly secure the contract for you?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" Robert growls before his brother can answer. "Is that enough for you? Just tell us how big a share you will accept from it, damn it! And be reasonable!"

"Before I do that, there is one more matter to clear up: How did you know that a problem would arise in the course of the evening you spent with the prince? How did you know to arrange for the reporter to be there at the house which the maid you were collaborating with was working at? I know by now that you recommended Millie Clarke to that very house not two months ago, most certainly with the aim of having her in place for just such an occasion. But how did you know that a prostitute would die that evening? You murdered her, didn't you?"

"How dare you suggest that we–" George begins, red with anger.

"You surely helped her along with a small dose of other poisons which would enhance the effects of the liquor she drank. Taking a human life just to set your plan in motion to put the prince in a difficult spot – what fine behaviour."

"Dammit, Phantomhive. So what if we did? She was nobody."

Ciel regards the brothers coldly, with a contemptuous smile on his face, before surprising them with his reply: "Nobody? Her name was Sally Miles."

"Just cut to the bloody chase and tell us how much you want from us," George hisses.

What if I were to tell you that I want nothing at all from your hoped-for contract and all its profits?"

"What do you mean?" George asks hopefully, greedily, even as he shivers again, for the room does feel very cold.

"I mean what I just said. I want nothing to do with your contract and its profits. All I want – all I _wanted_ – was your admission of plotting to deceive and blackmail the Prince of Wales, whose greatest mistake in this matter was to believe you to be his friends. All I wanted was your admission that by those deceitful methods and suggestion of the possibility of further blackmail, you intended to obtain a means to a trading fortune. All I wanted was your admission that you murdered a woman to achieve all that – a young woman named Sally Miles who did not deserve to die in that manner."

"Our _admission_? What the hell...?"

His words trail off into nothing as the thick curtain in front of the windows that he is so certain he had closed earlier is unexpectedly pulled aside from behind the fabric by a strange, tall Indian man wearing a turban.

"Thank you, Agni," Ciel smiles.

"What–? Who–?" George splutters, only to fall silent as the stranger called Agni steps aside to reveal the Prince of Wales himself, the expression on his face one of absolute shock and fury from the revelation of the betrayal and deceit.

At the same time, the door of the room opens, and another Indian man enters, accompanied by someone who initially appears to be a servant, but who then whips off his shabby black greatcoat and flat cap to reveal himself as Lord Arthur Randall, Commissioner of Scotland Yard.

"Have you heard enough to make the arrests, Lord Randall?" Ciel asks smugly. "His Royal Highness too has heard the admissions of guilt with his own ears, and will confirm that these are the same men who misinformed and misguided him, and took money from him."

"George Easton and Robert Easton," Randall says grimly. "You are under arrest for attempting to blackmail the Prince of Wales, which carries a charge of treason; and for the murder of Sally Miles."

"No, we aren't," George states boldly. "If you arrest me, I'll tell the world what His Highness was up to that evening, about all the whores there, and about how willing he was to pay us to shush the girl..."

"A charge of treason means that the one charged shall be tried in a closed court, with no access to the press or indeed to anyone who would prattle, for treason involves state secrets, which are by law not to be broadcast in any manner," Ciel says. "You will have no one to tell."

George and Robert Easton turn as pale as their jackets, then George suddenly becomes so red with rage again that he looks as if he will burst.

"You disgusting little pest!" he shrieks, as he whips a pistol out from a drawer of the table he stands beside, and points it at Ciel. "If I'm going down, I'll make sure you arrive in hell before I do!"

In the same instant, Robert Easton draws out his own gun from a holster concealed under his jacket and aims it in the direction of Sebastian, the maid and the reporter. The wild look in his eyes suggests hysteria, and an intention to take down as many people with him as he can.

But when Lord Randall himself draws his weapon, Robert nervously swings his gun towards him instead, so the two men end up pointing their pistols straight at each other.

"Agni!" Ciel calls out despite the gun aimed at him, as he sees how dangerous the scene has become. "Protect His Royal Highness with your life! I give you my word that Sebastian will protect Prince Soma."

"Yes, Lord Ciel," says the Brahmin noble, before turning to Prince Edward to say quietly and very respectfully: "Your Royal Highness, I ask your pardon for having to bear you from this room in the same unconventional manner in which I bore you into it."

The queen has an Indian servant known as The Munshi, for whom the crown prince has no affection – but that is only because of the man's abuse of his position. Edward has in fact visited India and had a good impression of its people in general. He has even publicly declared that he does not see why Indians should be treated differently from Englishmen. He certainly likes what he has seen of this particular Indian man before him – his loyalty to his own prince, his respect for his fellow men, his handsome face and noble carriage, and his incredible strength. So Prince Edward says: "You may transport me from this room in any manner you see fit. I trust you."

Agni lifts the heavy, middle-aged prince onto his back as if he weighs no more than a feather, and leaps easily out of the window into the grounds below. There, he carefully sets him down and ensures he is steady on his feet before he starts escorting him towards where his carriage and his own attendants wait to convey him back to the safety of the palace.

Through all this, George Easton's gun never wavers in the direction it is pointed in – straight at Ciel's head. The man has a look of suicidal determination on his face, but he is waiting for the flurry around him to settle so that he can calmly kill the boy and then himself, preferably without any interruption from any source.

"Sebastian! Deliver the prisoners into the custody of the detectives outside, and get Soma to safety," is Ciel's next order, given as smoothly as if there were no pistol trained on him. The maid and the reporter are witnesses against the Eastons and must be kept alive, and he has given Agni his word that Soma will be protected, so it must be done.

"Young Master, _you_ are my priority–" Sebastian begins, only to be cut off by the earl.

"I promised Agni that you would protect Soma, and _I command you_ to do just that," Ciel says, evidently suspecting that his butler might well sacrifice Soma the way he sacrificed Abberline.

"No, Ciel! Sebastian must stay with you–" Soma protests, but the butler hesitates only a split second longer before he obeys, transferring both the tied-up reporter and maid to his right shoulder, and seizing Soma with his left arm, then rushing all three out of the house with superhuman speed.

It is the work of a mere moment for the butler to whisk the Indian prince and the prisoners out to where Lord Randall's men wait further down the street. But once he is there, he is frustrated by having to slow to human pace to explain to the officers: "These two are the reporter and the maid who conspired with the Easton brothers to deceive the Prince of Wales. Lord Randall's orders are that you take them into secure custody at once, for they are to be charged with conspiracy to commit treason. And this is Prince Soma – you are to protect him against all danger until his servant comes for him."

That done, Sebastian practically vanishes before the astonished eyes of the men from Scotland Yard so that he can tear back into the house, where he has left his master in the withdrawing room with George Easton's gun pointing at his head, and Lord Randall with his gun trained on Robert Easton. Sebastian takes only another moment to return to the house, but as he flies down the long hallway, two gunshots ring out.

He bursts through the half-closed door, his unfeeling devil's heart experiencing, for the first time, something akin to the dismay of realising that he has failed to protect the one to whom he is contracted. For his senses have informed him that one of the pistols that has gone off is George Easton's.

But the second he enters the room and sees what has happened, those newly hatched sensations alter.

For Agni has managed to return to the room in time after escorting the crown prince to his attendants, and has safely deflected away from Ciel and into the wood panelling the bullet fired by George Easton's gun with a silver trencher that he has also used to knock out the elder Easton.

Robert Easton is down on the floor beside his unconscious brother, wounded in the shoulder by a shot from Randall's pistol, his own weapon kicked out of his reach by the Commissioner.

"Lord Ciel, are you all right? Please tell me you are all right!" Agni pleads anxiously – he cannot yet properly check the boy over visually, because he has scooped him into his arms and held him tight to his body to shield him from further danger.

"I'm all right," Ciel whispers back in a soft voice which only slightly betrays how shaken he is.

Sebastian's unfeeling devil's heart then feels the oddest sensation of displeasure when he can only watch as his master leans into Agni's chest, closes his left eye as if preparing himself to sleep, and lowers his delicate head to the Brahmin man's shoulder with a readiness that looks to the demon like pure, unadulterated trust.


	7. Competition

"I can take my master now," Sebastian says, walking up to Agni whilst Lord Randall and his men are picking up the Easton brothers from the floor.

Agni starts to hold Ciel out to Sebastian. The butler's hands are almost around the boy's waist when the earl growls out a stern objection to being handed over: "Why am I being passed between the two of you as if I were an infant? Put me down. I am not a baby."

As Agni sets Ciel down gently, he locks eyes with Sebastian, giving him an amused look over the boy's head. Sebastian expresses no acknowledgement of the look. He is still examining the new sense of possessiveness that surprised him when he saw that another had momentarily taken his place as his master's protector and defender. He does not wish to exchange such glances with the other servant – it implies that they are sharing the child in some way, and Sebastian does not like to share.

Agni, however, partly disarms the devil by telling him: "Mister Sebastian, you left Lord Ciel's side to keep my prince safe. I would never have forgiven myself if I had been unable to keep _your_ young master just as safe. My prince means everything to me. How could I allow you to lose that which is most precious to you while you were protecting that which is most precious to me?"

"Mister Agni is most honourable," Sebastian replies evenly.

Ciel, standing between the two and completely dwarfed by them, is on the brink of clicking his tongue in annoyance at what he thinks of as an absurd and pointless exchange when Lord Randall catches his eye from across the room.

The Commissioner nods to him – silent thanks for how his unconventional methods to expose the truth have worked in cooperation with police procedure this time. Ciel, from between the two giants, nods back in equally formal fashion.

As Robert Easton is dragged away by Randall and his men, still bleeding from this gunshot wound, he snarls out to Ciel: "Our mother won't let this go."

Ciel does not trouble himself to reply. He waits till the brothers and the policemen are at the front gate before he walks out of the house with Sebastian and Agni. It gives him time to recover the composure that had momentarily shattered when George Easton had fired his gun straight at his face, and Agni had stunned him with his intervention.

On their way out, they pass the Eastons' butler and other servants. Although they are standing around looking lost, they have enough of their wits about them to give the Earl of Phantomhive the most resentful of glares as he leaves the residence.

***

Finnian is waiting with the carriage, which he has moved to a spot under the trees outside a nearby park. He lights up when his master, Sebastian and Agni emerge from the house. Because he is playing coachman today, the gardener is dressed properly in sober black, with a shiny black hat on his head. He feels proud that he was the one who took the reins at noon and drove his master safely to the Eastons.

Each of the groups into which their party divided itself earlier has timed everything down to the minute. Sebastian alone has carried out at least three different jobs in the time it took Finny to drive Ciel down a few London streets: he has approached Soma and Agni for assistance, taken them to Lord Randall (who for this period of time has instant access to the Prince of Wales), then hunted down the scullery maid and the reporter.

Finny does not know how Sebastian has done all that in such an impossibly brief time, but he has seen the butler perform daily miracles for nearly three years, and has ceased to question the probability or even possibility of what he can do.

Now the police are taking the criminals away, Lord Phantomhive is walking steadily out of the house with Sebastian and Agni, and Prince Soma is sprinting across the street to throw his arms around the earl. Finny sees that everything has come off well. His moment of panic when he heard the guns go off has passed now that he is certain no one he cares about is hurt. He quickly urges the horses up the street, so his master will not have to walk any further.

"Ciel!" Prince Soma is wailing, and rocking the earl from side to side, as Finny pulls up beside them. "I was so afraid you would be hurt! Why didn't you let Sebastian stay with you?"

Ciel growls as he pries Soma's arms loose from around his neck to free himself. "Stop that, you royal idiot. This is a public street. You're embarrassing us both," he mutters.

"I don't care," the young prince insists, keeping an arm round the boy's shoulders. "You are my precious friend, and I will embarrass you all I please, wherever I please."

"My lord, is it all over?" Finny asks, jumping down from the box seat to hold the horses steady while Sebastian opens the carriage door.

"It is almost over," Ciel replies.

"I heard the gunshots..." Finny begins.

"Only Robert Easton was shot," Ciel tells him, pausing on the pavement to wave Soma ahead of him into the carriage. He pauses a further moment when he sees that both Sebastian, and Agni – who has just handed Soma into the carriage – are offering to help him step up into the vehicle.

Sebastian gives Agni a look, and the Brahmin withdraws his hand with a smile, allowing the butler to take his master's hand to steady him as he climbs in. Sebastian keeps hold of Ciel's hand even when the earl has taken his seat, and looks him over quickly, to be certain that he is not in any way harmed. Ciel, embarrassed and irritated, twists his hand out of the butler's fingers and scowls as he looks out of the other window.

Sebastian would normally take the reins, but as Finny has done a decent job of transporting Ciel here without incident, he continues as coachman. The butler thus enters the carriage after Agni, and pulls the door shut. The two servants would have placed their masters in the seats facing forward for a more comfortable ride, while they themselves would have occupied those facing backwards. But Ciel has planted himself in the seat opposite Soma. So Agni sits next to the prince, and Sebastian takes his place beside the earl, who does not look at him.

When Finny climbs back into the box seat and clucks his tongue to get the horses moving, Soma asks Ciel: "Are we going back to the manor?"

"That would be my preference," Ciel replies. "Unfortunately, I must remain in London a little longer to see if His Royal Highness has any further instructions for us. If he decides that he wishes to tie up the loose ends today, it may be possible for us to leave tonight. But we shall see. Thank you, Soma, and thank you, Agni, for agreeing to help us at such short notice. You put your own lives at risk to expose the blackmailers."

"It was nothing," Soma replies with a grin. "We've been handing out endless rolls of curry bread to people on the streets for days, so this makes an interesting change. We almost rushed back to your manor about a week ago when we heard someone mention that it had burnt down. But someone else said he had just seen with his own eyes that it was perfectly fine, and we got your letter too telling us that all was well. So we stayed to help the people who had lost their homes. Things are starting to settle in the parts of the city affected by the fire, though, and more of the displaced people are being sheltered by various charities and churches, so we were free to help – and proud to be involved in such an adventure!"

"I am honoured to have been of use," is Agni's quieter response, after Soma's gushing speech.

"Thank you, Agni, for saving me from George Easton's bullet," Ciel says.

"I would do it all over again for such a friend of my prince," Agni smiles.

Sebastian eyes Agni with an inscrutable look, and remains silent.

***

As the carriage disappears up the street, two figures step out from the park in front of which the Phantomhive carriage had earlier waited.

"Was that the child, with the covered eye?" Percival Ambrose asks his servant.

"The boy's scent is the same as the human one I detected in the churchyard, master, other than the vicar's."

"He does not look much like his great-grandfather. But half the Phantomhive men take after their mothers, so that is hardly surprising. Which of the individuals with him ate Susan's succubus?"

"The tall one dressed in black, master."

"What is the nature of his contract with the Phantomhive child?"

"I am unable to ascertain that."

"Well, I don't suppose it makes a difference. All such contracts are evil."

"Shall we follow them to where they reside, master?"

"No, Carsten, not yet. Not today. I shall wait and see what else develops before I make myself known to them. I want to first understand what the child intends to do with his life. Or if he intends to live at all. Then I shall know what to do next."

***

Soma and Agni have not been to the town house for some time. They gaze up at the narrow, smallish building as the carriage pulls up outside the gate along the quiet street in Belgravia.

"Can I trust you to put the horses away into their stalls for a second time this week without killing them?" Sebastian asks the gardener dryly, once they are all out of the vehicle.

"Of course you can, Mister Sebastian!" Finny responds eagerly.

"I am certain that Finnian will do an excellent job," Agni says with an encouraging smile, making the young man glow, and prompting a sceptical look from Sebastian which suggests that he now recalls why Agni has never been his favourite person. The Brahmin mysteriously brings out the best in the incompetent servants, something Sebastian has never done, not least because he thinks he can do everything so much better on his own.

The devil's reaction to Agni's presence does not improve once they are indoors. For despite his being a guest here, he seems to know exactly where everything is in the kitchen. He has cheerfully announced to his prince and the earl that he has some packs of excellent spices tucked inside his sash, and will cook a special curry for lunch to help everyone settle down after the danger and excitement at the Eastons'.

Sebastian can only quietly state that he will bring out some tea before he strides into the kitchen after Agni.

"Ah, you have winter vegetables in these sacks," Agni remarks, examining the contents of some of the cloth bags on the counter.

"I bought them at the market yesterday," Sebastian says. "I had thought to make soup or stew for the Young Master today, but as he seems not to object to the idea of your dish..."

"You are too kind, Mister Sebastian," Agni smiles. "These would be just the thing for adding to the curry."

"Wonderful," comes the cold reply.

They get the fire started and put a pot of water on to boil. Agni will use most of it for the curry, and Sebastian will take some for the teapot. As they wait for it to heat up, Agni stirs the spices into a paste and cuts up the vegetables, while Sebastian selects a blend of English tea, to which he adds a little dried chamomile, which humans seem to find calming. It is not likely to go well with the curry, Sebastian thinks. However, he hopes the young master will have finished drinking it before the curry is served.

"That is good tea," Agni observes, seeing what Sebastian has chosen from the row of tins lining the shelf above the cabinet. "It would probably have gone better with the stew you had thought of preparing for Lord Ciel, but it may also go surprisingly well with my curry."

"Will it now?" Sebastian asks uninterestedly.

"I think it will," Agni replies in a soft, yet bright voice. "Mister Sebastian, this is not a contest, you know. Our curry duel ended at the Crystal Palace three weeks ago, did it not?"

"Hmm."

"I believe we both won there. Your curry earned the favour of the queen, but my failed efforts somehow earned freedom for my prince from the illusory memory of Mina, and my freedom from Harold West's blackmail."

"Indeed."

"I cook now in appreciation of all that you and Lord Ciel have done for my prince and for me," Agni continues gently. "I do not cook to compete with you. Perhaps others out there would seek to do that, but I am not one of them."

As he says those words, Agni casts the butler a glance that gives the words so much more meaning than their semantics alone.

Sebastian nods in a sign that he has understood, and turns back to the tea. Nothing in his outward manner has altered, but Agni can tell with his sixth or seventh senses that the attitude which was very much like resentment in the other servant is receding. Sebastian is resuming his manner of regarding him merely as a regular annoyance, in the same way he regards the other servants, Prince Soma, and nearly everyone else.

He smiles to himself as the butler leaves the kitchen bearing his teapot on a silver tray. Everything is back to normal... or _somewhat_ back to normal, Agni realises, when he notes some continuing tension between the butler and his master while they are waiting on the earl and the prince in the dining room.

He says nothing until later on, after Ciel and Soma have had their curry and thoroughly enjoyed it, and he and Sebastian have returned to the kitchen. Finny has been sent out into the patch of garden beside the horse stalls with his curry lunch on a plate, so Agni and Sebastian are alone together. Agni has never seen Sebastian eat anything, but he invites the butler to join him in consuming the rest of the curry.

"It is nothing like your prize-winning concoction, but I believe it will not disappoint your tastebuds," the Brahmin says.

"I am not really one for curry," Sebastian demurs politely.

"But if you would not object to it, I would be honoured if you would eat this late lunch with me," Agni presses. "After all, you cook remarkable curry for one who claims to not be fond of it."

Sebastian considers the proposal. Eating some human food will hardly damage him. After all, he has recently survived the young master's "gift" of lemonade spiked with Mr Tanaka's ghastly powdered seasoning, a finger of chocolate from a wasted thirteenth-birthday cake, endless samplings of curry in the lead-up to the competition at the Crystal Palace, and a great deal more.

He accepts Agni's invitation. The two sit down at the servants' table in the kitchen, and tuck into curry mopped up with chunks broken off a length of French bread. Adjusting his devil's tastebuds to human calibration to gauge the quality of what he is consuming, Sebastian decides that it is good food.

"Thank you, Mister Agni," he says, after his third mouthful. "Your cooking is excellent."

Agni inclines his head in acknowledgement of the rare praise. "Cooking is an art, though. Whatever my prince may say about my curry-cooking prowess, there is no definite science to it, and I do not always succeed. Everything depends on taste and perception. There are times when I measure out precisely the same quantities of the same ingredients and prepare them in exactly the same way, and the dish somehow still tastes different. Perhaps the artist's emotions have an effect."

Sebastian understands what Agni is saying intellectually, but he does not comprehend it beyond that, for his own cooking is purely scientific, developed and measured according to his master's exquisite yardsticks of taste.

Agni goes on to say: "We humans are changeable creatures. We perceive art differently from one moment to another. We do not always like things in the same way we did before. But that is the beauty of it – there is always hope for change. If something has gone wrong, it can be made better. If something is good for a time, we remain thankful for the occasions when it is not as good, because we will be able to appreciate it better when things become good again."

"Are we still discussing cooking, Mister Agni?" Sebastian asks archly.

"Cooking is symbolic of many things, Mister Sebastian. We are discussing whatever you think we are discussing," Agni returns with equanimity. "I only wish to say that the recipe you use to please another's tastes may not always be appreciated in the same way all the time, but if the food is cooked with love and devotion, a perceptive soul who tastes it will always appreciate that love behind it."

For once in his existence, Sebastian senses that he lacks a crucial weapon in his arsenal of tools to perform his duties to his own exacting standards. He takes another mouthful of the curry and examines it carefully. Devils can taste every physical and chemical element in food, the least morsel of contamination, and any poison and spells thrown in. But he finds himself unable to perceive what emotion it may hold. Perhaps only humans fancy themselves able to distinguish characteristics like "love" in food.

He finally remarks: "Not everyone understands love and devotion. At least not the same way you do."

"That too is part of the beauty of it," Agni says. "We all understand love and devotion differently. Your way may not be my way – or your master's way, for that matter – but if it is understood as such between two souls, that is all that matters."

"Mister Agni is very wise in the ways of cooking and devotion," Sebastian smiles politely. "Although much of his subtlety is lost on a heartless creature like myself, I shall hold the lesson in my head for a time when I am better able to use a heart."

"You are not as bad as you make yourself out to be."

"Don't make statements about things you do not understand," Sebastian says, lightly enough for his matter-of-fact utterance to be taken as little more than a joke.

Agni does not have time to respond to that, however, for Finny comes rushing into the kitchen to inform them that the same unmarked carriage in which the Prince of Wales had been driven away from the street outside the Eastons' house earlier that day is pulling up at the gate as he speaks.

"I know it's the same – I recognise the horses!" the gardener says breathlessly.

Sebastian and Agni hurry through the house and wait behind the front door while Finnian tears around to the front to open the gate. A man, whom they recognise as one of the attendants who had waited for the prince in the street some distance from the Eastons' house, steps out of the carriage and onto the driveway. He is not dressed in the usual livery of the prince's household, but in a dark, finely cut, anonymous suit which speaks of the prince's continued emphasis on the need for discretion.

Sebastian opens the door for him as he ascends the stairs. The messenger enters the house and is shown into the dining room, where Ciel rises to accept the note that he holds out to him with both hands. The Prince of Wales' seal secures the envelope.

"His Royal Highness has authorised me to say to you what he has written in the note you now hold, Lord Phantomhive," the messenger says. "You are expected at Buckingham Palace at four o'clock today for a private audience with His Highness. His Highness also asks that Prince Soma Asman Kadar of Bengal accompany you, as well as your servant who captured the conspirators, and Prince Soma's servant also."

Ciel bows to this representative of the future king of England, and the man bows in return before leaving the house. It is now two o'clock. They have time to prepare for their visit to the palace, which is only a short ride away by coach.

Soma has no change of clothing with him, but Ciel has a large collection of outfits even in the town house, stored carefully in the tightly closed wardrobes to keep pests out. Some of the items that have not been touched in years smell rather musty, but other, more recently cleaned ones are all right when unfolded and shaken out.

There is no possibility that the taller, 17-year-old Soma could ever fit into Ciel's unaltered clothes, but Sebastian and Agni are creative under the need to improvise, and quickly discover that some old silk cravats and printed-silk sashes of Ciel's can double as the exotic stoles and sashes favoured by the Indian prince. An oversized silk coat once worn for a costume party makes a pleasing outer garment for the older boy. And a tidying of Soma's hair, an adjustment of the way it is bound, and some nimble wrapping of the binding in gold braid unwound from an old coat of Ciel's make the Bengal royal ready for a visit to the palace.

Once assured that his companions will not be unsuitably attired for their status and the occasion, Ciel retires to his bedroom with Sebastian, leaving Agni in the guest room with Soma to put the outfit together.

When they are alone, Sebastian drops to one knee in front of him, bows his head and says: "Forgive me, Young Master. I failed to be your shield as our contract demands that I be."

"Stop grovelling before me," Ciel rumbles. "It was I who ordered you out of my presence and caused you to be absent when the gun went off, so are you suggesting that I ought to grovel before you too?"

"Would I do such a thing, Young Master?" Sebastian asks, looking up with an ironic smile. "But regardless of your orders, it was my duty to have been there when George Easton fired."

"So you could save me while leaving the bullet to ricochet into poor Soma? Do you think I would ever permit such a thing to happen again?"

Abberline's unspoken name hangs in the air between them.

Sebastian does not answer at once, but removes his gloves and wipes a little smudge off Ciel's left cheek before saying: "I would have absorbed the bullet. But if you do not hold it against me for obeying you, then I shall continue with my usual duties."

Another smudge visible only to the devil's eyes is stroked off Ciel's chin, and more unseen traces of things on the boy's face that displease the butler. That done, Sebastian leans in and breathes in the scent of his skin before pronouncing: "There were specks of gunpowder on your face, Young Master, but they have been removed."

 _Hints of Agni's scent too, from where you rested your cheek on his shoulder._ But he does not say that.

He rises and turns to the wardrobe, from which he selects several garments. Once the earl looks satisfied with what he holds up for his examination, he begins to undress him.

For several minutes, they do not speak. It is not, however, an uncomfortable silence, considering what has gone before. They have simply fallen swiftly into a long-practised routine of getting done what is necessary, quickly and efficiently.

Sebastian has chosen an appropriately formal, double-breasted, straight-cut black coat with burnished brass buttons for his master, over a white shirt that is not excessively lacy, a white cravat secured with a sapphire pin, and a discreet charcoal-grey waistcoat. For this occasion, the earl must also be dressed in long trousers, which he dislikes. Laced-up black leather shoes, his walking stick, and a black top hat with deep-grey trim complete the look.

They speak again only when Sebastian has pulled his gloves back on, and is about to open the bedroom door for his master to step out. That is when the butler says in a low voice: "Young Master, remember all that we agreed you would have to say to the Prince of Wales. This is the time to do it."

Ciel looks up at Sebastian, nods, and precedes him out of the bedroom. They meet Soma and Agni at the top of the stairs, then they go down to where Finny has prepared the carriage and horses again, and begin the drive towards the palace.


	8. Advice

"What is the likelihood that this is a trap, and His Royal Highness will have us arrested on some trumped-up charge once we are inside the palace, then order us killed to silence us?" Ciel asks idly, when the carriage is in motion.

Soma and Agni look alarmed, not least because Ciel sounds as if he almost looks forward to such an outcome.

"Young Master, why are you bringing this up now?" Sebastian responds evenly. "Such remarks will make Prince Soma and Mister Agni nervous."

"Worse things have happened," Ciel sighs, no doubt with reference to eventful moments from his own past. "It would only be fair to prepare Soma and Agni for the possibility, so that Agni can prepare to protect his master to the best of his ability."

"Of course," Sebastian agrees mildly.

Agni, after careful consideration, says: "If anything does happen, I doubt that it will be with the authorisation of the Prince of Wales."

"Why do you say that?" Ciel inquires.

"I am not too poor a judge of character," Agni replies simply. "I have seen and done a great deal in my earlier years that I no longer consider acceptable. But I have retained the lessons of those years, and I know the nature of people. Although I have not been in England very long, and have heard some speak ill of His Royal Highness, I did not sense evil in him while in his presence. I sensed that he can be arrogant, but also affable; he can be foolish, but also sensible; sometimes he can be weak and led astray, but he is in these middle years of his life developing a more upright character. In the main, I believe he has a kind heart."

"That is a very thorough analysis for someone who has not been in England long," Ciel comments.

Sebastian does not wish to say what he thinks of the analysis of a man who not two hours ago told a devil that he was not as bad as he made himself out to be. But his master is asking him for his view: "Sebastian?"

Obliged to answer, he examines the matter and concludes that Agni's assessment is not far off the mark.

"Mister Agni is probably right," he says. "It is true that His Royal Highness has not always made good decisions. Even Her Majesty once declared after he hastened his father's death that she could never look at him again without a shudder. But he seems to have tried to change for the better in recent years, and he is not of vicious character. I do not think he will silence us that way. If he did, he would hardly do it at Buckingham Palace – I believe it has become a much less sinister place since the demise of Mr Ash?"

"Hmm," Ciel murmurs.

"If anything does happen, however, I shall protect you with all that is at my disposal," Sebastian declares in a manner that is almost – for him – both cheerful and gallant.

Ciel glares once at him before turning his face to the window again with his umpteenth scowl of the day. He does not have to pull that face for too long, though, for the ride is a short one. At the gates of the palace, they find that the guards have been told to expect them. The carriage is waved through. Ciel notes that the flag is not flying above the palace, meaning that the queen has not returned from Balmoral yet, and is not in residence.

They are directed to the main entrance, in consideration of the rank of Prince Soma and the Earl of Phantomhive. A manservant of the Prince of Wales greets them inside, and leads them through the grand interior, up the stairs, and down two passageways. They pass other staff going about their routine duties. Sebastian and Agni look to be correct so far – this is not the place to murder four people in cold blood.

When they are shown into a large sitting room, they see two figures standing by the window, looking out into the grounds below. One is the Prince of Wales; the other is Lord Randall. The prince is pointing out some feature of the grounds to Randall when they enter, and the two men turn around.

"Your Royal Highness," says the manservant, who goes on to announce them as they bow to the Prince of Wales. "Prince Soma Asman Kadar, the Earl of Phantomhive, and their men, Mister Sebastian Michaelis and Mister Agni."

"Good, good. I am delighted that you have all come. Please, sit down," the prince says graciously, moving his portly body with surprising ease towards the circle of armchairs on the other side of the room. "The tea was brought in only a minute before you arrived, so it is ready to drink."

He does not need to be so polite if he does not choose, Ciel thinks. In fact, it is highly unusual for him to already be in the room before all the guests are here. Royalty almost always comes last, because it is generally considered a breach of etiquette for any guest to arrive after the royal host does. Indeed, the prince would be well within the rights of his lofty rank to keep them standing, speak a few superficial words of approval, and dismiss them. But it appears that His Highness intends to be an intimate host today. Ciel and Sebastian have already planned, the night before, how the earl might ask to have a private word with the prince, supposing they were quickly shown the door. But with the prince preparing to sit down with them in the comfortable armchairs around the heavy coffee table resting on a large Oriental carpet, that line will not be required as yet.

Sebastian and Agni remain standing, behind their respective masters' chairs, as they would in any social situation. However, the prince surprises them by saying: "Mister Agni, Mister Michaelis. Please sit down. For this time, you are first and foremost my guests, and the butlers of your masters only second. And this is not a formal occasion."

The manservant pours out the tea, an excellent Earl Grey blend if one judges by its aroma, into fine bone china cups in a black and gold pattern. He serves the two princes first, then the earl, Lord Randall, and finally the butlers, who look out of place seated with those who so outrank them. It is certainly the first time that Sebastian has been seated for tea in his master's presence.

When everyone is holding a teacup, and shortbread biscuits have also been served by the man, the Prince of Wales says: "Thank you, Markham."

The servant withdraws, leaving the prince alone with his visitors.

The prince speaks once the door is pulled quietly shut: "I wish to express my appreciation to all of you for all you did to apprehend the conspirators who so betrayed me – and for the discretion with which you discovered two of the parties. I am thankful for the speed and efficiency of your response. I have thanked Lord Randall, and I wish to extend the same thanks to you, Prince Soma, Lord Phantomhive, and your excellent men."

"Your Royal Highness," says Ciel. "It is my duty, and therefore also my butler's, to protect you with all that is within our means."

"It was an honour for us to have been of some use, Your Royal Highness," Soma adds.

"Prince Soma, I hear that you are the son of the Raja of Bengal?" the crown prince queries. "I did not have the privilege of meeting your father when I was in India many years ago, but I would be pleased to write to him and tell him what a credit you are to him, and what a credit to all your people your manservant Agni is."

The crown prince looks at Agni, who bows his upper body elegantly despite being seated with a teacup and biscuits.

"Sir, you are very kind," Soma replies, knowing that this prince is showing him far more respect than he needs to, for despite his own royal status, he is only a boy, while the other prince is a middle-aged man whose five surviving children are all older than Soma. Not only that, but Queen Victoria has the title of Empress of India, so Soma is nothing to the queen's heir. "But I must confess that my father does not know I am in England. I am only his twenty-sixth son, so he has his hands full with everyone else."

Prince Edward notes the boy's plain honesty and excellent diction – he speaks English without a discernible accent, and is obviously well-educated. He already knows from his direct dealings with Agni that the Brahmin manservant is probably as well-bred as the prince he serves.

"I am sure that if I send your father a letter to say that you are in England to expand your horizons, you will be in less trouble with him when you do return?" the crown prince says good-humouredly to the youth. "My own sons are seven to eight years older than you, so I know very well what boys are like at your age. People think that princes must make distant fathers, but my father was very involved in my life, and in the lives of my brothers and sisters, and I have done my best to be as good a father to my sons and daughters as he was to me."

The prince looks reflective for a passing moment. Ciel knows he must be thinking of Prince Albert. The queen's consort died almost thirty years ago when his poor health took a turn for the worse following his rushing to Edward's side in Ireland to rebuke him for living in a way that would harm his reputation – word had got out that the young prince was housing an actress in his tent while undergoing a military-experience stint in that country.

The queen has never completely forgiven her son for his father's death. But of late, the relationship has improved, despite Edward's continuing to live fashionably, and the many mistresses he keeps. A big public scandal involving the death of a prostitute, the manslaughter of a reporter, and the abduction of a scullery maid, would certainly sour the relationship again, for the queen is fond of the Princess of Wales, and tolerates Edward's lifestyle only because she sees that his wife accepts it with dignity.

"Phantomhive here is of course even more of a child than Prince Soma," Edward remarks, pulling himself back from his reverie to turn his attention from Soma to Ciel. "Her Majesty, however, trusts you with a great deal. I understood why when I saw the masterful way you drew the information out of the two brothers who betrayed me so."

"Your Royal Highness is too kind," Ciel replies. "In truth, sir, I did very little. I had good advice and information to aid me, while the guilt of the Eastons caused them to betray themselves repeatedly. Her Majesty thinks too much of a child like me – I merely bear the reputations of my father and grandfather and all the Phantomhives before me who were far older and wiser than me when they were the heads of the family."

 _Emphasise your tender years. Express neither criticism of nor fondness for your position._

Sebastian's advice, given in private last night, surfaces clearly in his mind as he speaks to the prince.

 _Look wide-eyed, but be sober in your manner._

"I am but a boy dwarfed by the mantle of his forebears."

The Prince of Wales looks curious, but while others are present, it is inappropriate to go deeper into details that may possibly expose confidential information about assignments given to the earl by Her Majesty.

 _If no opportunity presents itself, ask for one. Request that His Royal Highness permit you a word in private on a matter that concerns how the Phantomhive Earldom may serve Great Britain more loyally. If he declines, saying that he has a prior engagement, ask if you may request an appointment at a future date through his staff. He will agree, for he will by then be grateful to you for sparing him a further blow to his public reputation._

It transpires that Ciel need not ask for the opportunity, for the prince unrolls the carpet for him. After several more minutes of desultory conversation, their royal host summons Markham to ask if the tea is ready in the west drawing room. Upon being informed that it is, the prince turns to Soma, Randall, Agni and Sebastian, and says: "I have ordered a proper tea for you. Having you in this room was but a chance for me to sit quietly over a cup of tea with people who have done good work for me – something I do not often have an opportunity to do. Markham will show you to the drawing room. If you would be so good as to begin without me, I must have a private word with the earl before we join you there."

The others bow and leave the room with Markham. Sebastian and Ciel exchange a glance before the door is closed, leaving Ciel alone with the prince. The prince walks to the window, where he gazes over the grounds and the dimming sky of this February afternoon. Ciel follows and stands silently to his left, a little behind him.

"Phantomhive – that is not your family's original name, is it?" Prince Edward asks.

"No, sir," Ciel replies. "The name of our earldom was not the family name to begin with. I believe it was my great-grandfather who adopted the title as his last name, to demonstrate that he was one with his duties."

 _Answer all introductory questions with perfect candour. Hold nothing secret, unless it concerns Her Majesty's private affairs. Never speak of Her Majesty's private matters to anyone, not even to her own son and heir, unless you wish to be distrusted forever._

"What, then, was your family name? I understand that you were orphaned young. Do you know your history?" the prince asks curiously.

"I know that my forefathers bore the name of Winterbourn, sir. I often think of returning that name to my family."

 _Find an opening to honestly express regret that things are not the way you wish they were._

"Do you not like the Phantomhive name?"

"I liked it better on my father than on myself. I may be mistaken, but I believe Your Royal Highness likes it no better than I do."

 _Be humble, but bold._

"Why do you say that?" inquires the prince.

"I ask your pardon if my words seem childish or offensive, but I wish to answer your question honestly, and I cannot do that without possibly causing offence."

 _Prepare him to be offended._

"You may speak freely."

"I am and always will be loyal to the throne, and this country. But I wish my loyalty could take the path of honest duty that would bring credit to the crown and some light to my family."

 _Briefly speak figuratively once you are permitted to speak your mind, to cast a frame for the offence you may give._

"Explain."

"The Earl of Phantomhive exists only to mend things in the dark, when he could instead steer a path into the light. If there were no darkness around the throne of England, I would not need to exist."

The prince bristles.

 _His Highness is quick to anger, but also quick to be soothed. Let him be angry._

"Are you saying that the throne of England is propped up by dark deeds that force you to live in the shadows? Phantomhive, I have given you leave to speak freely, but you would do well to remain within that greater bound permitted you and not overstep its confines."

"I speak only of Her Majesty's great love for her people, her family, and her responsibilities, sir. Her Majesty seeks to protect the integrity and goodness of all that she has a heart for, by removing from her garden the things of darkness that should not be there. As Queen of Great Britain, Her Majesty is perfectly correct to do so. But I am certain that bringing the darkness into the light would be a greater service to the crown than disposing of the darkness within the darkness. I wish I might serve my monarch and my country by administering true justice the way I did today, instead of administering concealed justice in the shadows."

 _Be resolute, but go about it with compassion._

The prince still looks stern, and a little red about the nose. "And if it had turned out that the Eastons had not murdered that poor girl in the house, but that she had died of a mishap; and if it had turned out that the reporter had indeed been killed and the scullery maid abducted, what sort of justice would you have administered?" he asks stiffly. "Would you have dragged my name through the mud?"

"No, Your Royal Highness. I have declared that my loyalty is to the throne of Great Britain, and that shall never change. As heir to that throne, Your Royal Highness has my full loyalty. I would never expose anything that you so much as hinted I ought to hide. But had you commanded me, sir, to administer true justice, and had you commanded me to bring the darkness into the light, I would have advised you – foolish child though I am – to first admit the whole truth to Her Majesty, then present the truth in a gentler light to the people, which would have condemned the Eastons without legally implicating Your Highness. Kings and queens are counselled to be proud and hold themselves aloft from even their own misjudgements. That way, they remain distant and feared. But the child that I am thinks that when one admits to small failings, one starts to be loved. And if you will forgive me for further saying so, if one would choose one's companions more wisely, there would be no need for such painful honesty, such administration of justice, or such admissions of failings."

The prince looks even more furious now, and Ciel prepares to use Sebastian's next piece of advice: _Tell him that he may detest you, or seek to destroy you, and there would be nothing you could do to save yourself – but no one else now living will ever speak such truths to him, with such candour, and with so little motive. It will remind him of his father._

"Phantomhive – you –" the prince begins. But in the next moment, his anger seems to peak, then decline, in complete silence. As Ciel watches, the Prince of Wales makes his way to a desk by the next window, and sits down heavily in the chair before that desk.

Ciel steps after him quietly, and remains on his feet. His Royal Highness suddenly looks very tired, and at the same time dismayed.

"My God, you're only a child. A slip of a child..." he murmurs.

"I ask your pardon, sir. I say foolish things that make sense only to me."

 _Give him space to retreat. Do not press him into a corner that he can find no way out of. It will only cause him to push back hard at you to escape._

"Perhaps you do. Perhaps you do not. But sometimes, children speak the greatest truths. You are treading on dangerous ground, Ciel Phantomhive, but you are not wrong to say that if I did nothing to be ashamed of, there would be nothing to hide, and no darkness to hide it in. If nothing else has struck me today, it is what the crown of England has done by using one so young to do its darkest work. We are no longer in the medieval ages. Children ought to be children."

 _Better yet, give him enough space that he is willing to be defeated._

"One such as I can never be the light; but at least I need not always be the darkness," Ciel says quietly, almost mournfully.

 _Evoke a sense of sadness._

"Why should you not be the light?" the prince asks, a note of regret in his voice. "You are but a child. I lost my youngest son to death only a day after he was born. He would have been but a year older than Prince Soma by now had he lived, and I would have doted on him. You are even younger. Why should you not be the light?"

"That is too great an ambition for me, sir. All I ask is to not be the darkness forever."

The prince is silent for nearly a minute. At the end of that silence, he looks at Ciel and says: "I wished to speak with you privately today because I was impressed with your talents this morning. I wanted to learn if you would serve me as well as you have served Her Majesty if ever I should become king. But I cannot now in all good conscience use you as a watchdog."

"Your Royal Highness, I _am_ a loyal watchdog, first to Her Majesty, and second to you. You need not doubt my commitment."

"I do not. But I doubt _my_ willingness. I have no authority to advise Her Majesty how to use the children she chooses to serve her. But I am aware that my lack of authority is in no small part owing to the life I have lived. Perhaps, as I regain Her Majesty's trust, you can begin to leave the darkness behind."

***

Soma and Agni are excited in the carriage on the way back to the town house, because the Prince of Wales has asked them, over tea, to form two of his party for his visit to Denmark next week.

What the prince said to Soma was: "The trip will give the Princess of Wales an opportunity to visit her relations, and at the same time be a tour of sorts for me and my entourage. If you would be willing to form two of my party, I would be delighted – and you would give your father more reason to approve your being in Europe for the purposes of gaining more experience."

Soma and Agni are genuinely interested in the prospect of seeing another European country, and have readily accepted the prince's kind offer. The same offer has not been extended to Ciel, but the prince has not left him out because he is angry with him or dislikes him, but rather: "I shall not ask you, Lord Phantomhive, to join me. Not because I would not be interested in your company, but because I hear from those who know better than I do that you would regard such a prospect with horror rather than pleasure. I won't, therefore, torment you with a tour of Denmark."

"Thank you, sir. I am most grateful," was Ciel's reply, knowing that the prince liked the absence of pretence in his answer.

Now, in the carriage, he and Sebastian listen to Soma and Agni chatter about what Denmark will be like, and they indulgently answer their questions – Ciel giving what textbook information he has, and Sebastian speaking from personal experience, although he declines to give details about when and how he knows all that he does. When they reach the town house, Ciel says to Soma and Agni: "All right, enough about Denmark. You two go in and rest. Sebastian and I have an errand to run. We should be back in a few hours. Depending on what time we return, we may or may not leave for the manor tonight, so you may as well get comfortable in there."

He tells Finny to go in with the prince and Agni. Sebastian will drive the carriage, because he knows how to get to the address they are seeking.

"What errand?" Soma asks curiously, as he steps out of the carriage.

"Another one that might get you hurt – and I think we've risked your life more than enough times today, wouldn't you say?" Ciel replies.

Sebastian unlocks the gate and the door, ushers Soma and Agni in, and hands the keys to Finny. Then he returns to the carriage. As he closes the door prior to getting into the box seat, he says to Ciel: "You did very well with the Prince of Wales, Young Master."

"You weren't in the room. How would you know?"

"I have ways of knowing certain things."

"Funny how you can hear a quiet conversation going on in a palace when you had no idea that Vanel's thugs had broken into the manor that time and kidnapped me."

"I have ways of knowing _certain_ things," Sebastian smiles. "Whatever you may think of it, I think you did perfectly."

"I acted on your good advice," Ciel answers, quietly.

"Oh, is that a word of praise, my lord?" Sebastian asks sardonically.

"Shut up and drive."


	9. Enlightenment

Sebastian pulls gently on the reins as the carriage rolls up in front of a small house along a side street in the Holborn area. This stretch is gaslit by well-spaced lamps. The buildings are narrow and tall, pressed against one another, a mixture of shops and dwellings. Some have shops on the ground level and rooms above for the families of those who own the businesses, or their lodgers.

Ciel observes that the businesses are proper, and look reasonably successful. From the signboards he can make out, they include milliners, an attractive sweet shop, a grocer's, a bookshop, an umbrella maker, and a maker of walking sticks. No public houses are in sight, and no dens where other vices might lurk. No one lies drunk on the cobblestones. The doors and few stone steps that lead directly to people's homes look clean, so these are respectable buildings, not a collection of hovels.

He has not expected the person he seeks to be living here. His imagination has been coloured by Lord Randall's account of the man staggering, raving and ranting, into the kind of rudimentary police station that London might have had fifty years ago, not too long after the old times when police "runners" used to operate out of magistrates' courts rather than the proper, blue-lamp-fronted stations they have now.

Ciel also remembers what Lord Randall said about the succubus of half a century ago seeming to target evildoers. He has thus been imagining a loud, violent person living in squalor in a grimy tenement, not a small house that looks neatly kept, judging from its entrance and the clean curtains behind old but well-wiped glass.

So he was mistaken in telling Soma that this would be a dangerous errand – the place looks innocuous. For the first time, it occurs to Ciel that the man was spared because he was _not_ one of the wicked previously picked out by the master of the succubus.

Sebastian opens the carriage door for Ciel and helps him out. The street looks quiet enough that there is a good chance the horses and coach will be left unmolested even if they both step away from it. So Sebastian ties the reins securely to an iron post, then steps up to the front door of the house whose number is written on the piece of paper Lord Randall gave Ciel. The butler raps on the door with the knocker. Through the drapes, they can see lamplight in the front room, and it is not eight o'clock, so they expect that whoever lives here is not yet abed. Indeed, a man's voice calls out: "Yes? Who is there?"

"Mister William Thompson?" Ciel asks, raising his voice just enough to be heard through the door.

That same door opens a crack, and an elderly man looks out a little warily from beneath a head of thinning white hair. "I am William Thompson. What is the matter?" He speaks carefully and distinctly, and peers curiously at the boy with a covered eye on his doorstep, accompanied by a tall man in black.

"Mister Thompson, I apologise for disturbing you, but may we speak with you regarding an incident you reported to the police some fifty years ago?" Ciel asks, lowering his voice now so that the neighbours will not hear.

The man's eyes widen a little, and he questions: "How do you know about what happened to me? You're not one of them, are you?"

They do not know who the "them" are that Thompson has in mind, but Ciel replies: "We are not from the police; neither are we people who would do you harm. We merely want to ask what happened to you, for the purpose of our own investigations. We obtained your name and address from a source who heard it from a man who used to be a police constable, and who now regrets that he did not take your report seriously."

The winter evening is too dark, despite the gaslight, for such an old man to be able to make out the crest on Ciel's carriage, which has stopped outside the shut-up millinery next door. But he apparently gathers from the manner of dress of the boy and his companion that they are people of quality, and concludes that they are unlikely to try and eat him. He opens the door wider, steps aside, and invites them in.

"Thank you, Mister Thompson," Ciel says, as he and Sebastian take their hats off and enter the narrow hallway of the house. "I am Ciel Winter, and this is... my tutor, Sebastian Michaelis."

William Thompson leads them into his modest sitting room, where he offers them two clean and well-polished wooden chairs with faded cushions. He is rather thin, and moves quite slowly. As the "tutor", Sebastian takes his seat beside Ciel.

"Would you like some tea?" Thompson asks. "I don't claim to have very good tea, but it is passable..."

"Grandpapa, who is it?" the soft voice of a child interrupts the man from above them – the visitors guess that the young person must be speaking from the first landing of the stairs leading up from the hallway. Footsteps inform them that the person is descending the stairs.

"Excuse me," Thompson says, stepping towards the hall again just as a girl of about ten appears in the doorway, in a light-coloured dress. "Jemima, why are you not upstairs with your brother and sister?"

"I heard someone at the door, Grandpapa."

"I have visitors, Jemima. Say good evening to the gentlemen."

Sebastian and Ciel have risen from their chairs. The girl drops a childish curtsey and says: "Good evening sirs."

"Good evening," they reply politely, Sebastian sparing her a smile.

"Go back upstairs so that your little brother and sister do not also come looking for you. Where is your nurse?"

"Nurse Penny is dressing Tommy for bed. I shall return to the nursery now, before she knows I am gone," the child says, dropping another curtsey to the visitors before obeying her grandfather.

"I'm sorry," Thompson says, shaking his head with a smile and shutting the sitting-room door. "Children will be children, no matter how one advises them." Then he remembers that he is talking to a boy, and apologises: "No offence, young sir – you are so much more composed and serious than my grandchildren that for a moment, it did not occur to me to think of you as a child..."

"No offence taken," Ciel says, although he is conscious of how many worlds away he is from the little girl, even though he cannot be much older than her.

"My grandchildren are staying with me whilst my youngest daughter and her husband are in Bath, visiting his brother, who is very ill. Oh yes, before I forget – tea?"

"Thank you, but no. We have just dined," Ciel replies.

"Very well," he says, lowering himself into a chair as his guests resume their seats. "What can I tell you about what happened to me so long ago?"

"Whatever you are willing to tell us," Ciel says.

"To this day, after so many years, I remain uncertain about what occurred, so I do not know that what I can relate would sound very rational."

"Even if you do not think that it would make sense, please tell us what you can remember, in as much detail as possible."

"I can tell you that I was going home in the evening from the office where I worked as a law clerk, near the courts. It was October. I was nineteen years old. I remember that I was eager to go home to my wife that day, for we were only four months married. It was late, and dark, for I had had much paperwork to get through – I was young, you know, and unproven, so it was important to work harder than anyone else.

"But it didn't matter that it was dark – I had never worried about travelling between work and home, because this place was not at all far from the old office, and the most I ever had to concern myself with was street urchins who might pick my pockets. We lived here even then, with my father. We were not so comfortable at the time, of course, for this was a pipe maker's shop where we are sitting now, and our family only had the rooms above. But we did better over the years, my father and I. When the shopkeeper wished to sell his shop, my father bought it from him, in order that the whole house might be his, and eventually mine.

"So I was walking home quickly, feeling perfectly safe, when I heard someone call out from a very narrow side lane not three streets away from here. It was one of those side lanes with no name, and not nearly big enough for a horse – you can see it if you turn left upon leaving this place, go past three roads and look to your right. I had never before entered that lane after dark, for it was completely unlit, and between the backs of two rows of shop buildings. I don't remember what the words were that I heard, or if I even knew what the words were at the time – I only know that I felt compelled to walk into the lane. What I _next_ remember was something transparent, glowing white in the dark, horrible, looming over me, leaning towards me, and I felt as if all the life in my body was being dragged out of me. I couldn't stand. I fell to my knees, thinking I would never see my Mary again.

"But a light flared up, as if a match had been struck. A lamp was lit. A gentleman appeared, holding the lamp, and spoke the word: 'Stop'. The hideous thing drawing the life out of me floated back, and I could see the man's face, as he looked at me from no more than four feet away. The light of course was not good; it was hard to make out colours, but do you know, that hideous fog-like thing was giving off a white glow of its own, and I could actually see a little more colour by that glow than one would normally be able to by lamplight. It seemed to me that the gentleman's hair was silver – not colourless like mine is now, you know, but _silver_. It was rather long, hanging to his shoulders, unbound. I thought his eyes seemed a strange green – but I cannot be certain. He looked young, but he spoke with a gravity that did not sit well with his youthful appearance.

"He said to me: 'Forgive me. I thought I could accept drawing out half your life to sustain myself, but my conscience pricks me. I cannot do this. I chose you because you were a good man, for the spirits of the evil are rotten and hard to swallow. But I must not do this any more. I shall harm you no further. I am sorry for what I have taken of your life force so far – I cannot return it, but I have not taken much. I hope you will sustain no permanent damage from this. I shall never do this to you or to anyone again.' Then he put out the light and disappeared. The ghastly white thing left with him.

"I stumbled out of the lane, and wandered around for some time in a daze. When I gathered my wits, I did not go home, but went directly to the nearest building I could think of which housed policemen. They were moving from that station to another at the time, and no one wanted to listen to me. They seemed to think I was drunk, or mad, and threatened to lock me up. I was stuttering and sweating coldly, and I must have sounded insane. But I was not mad. Naturally, I didn't press the matter. Would you want to be locked up in a madhouse or a prison? I didn't. They took my name, wrote down where I lived, and threw me out. I calmed myself, and went home to my wife. Once I had thought the matter through, I decided that I was grateful to be alive. I lived the next forty-seven years with my Mary, our children and then grandchildren, and although the Lord took her home three years ago, I cannot be ungrateful for all the good years we had together because that gentleman spared me from that thing he owned. I never went to the police again about the matter, nor have I mentioned it to anyone before this, other than my father and my wife."

"Was your health harmed by what happened?" Ciel asks.

"I was much weaker than usual for some months after. But I became used to being that way. If I did not exert myself excessively, I was quite well. For a time, I feared that I would be a poor worker, for I tired easily. But I pushed on, and eventually became a lawyer – although a few years of that taught me that I had not the heart for the work. I later went into trade along with my father, then my sons and a son-in-law. I have little to complain about my life."

"It is good to know that, Mister Thompson."

"Yes."

"Do you recall what the man sounded like? English? Or foreign?"

"He sounded perfectly English, and his features too looked completely English. I have thought over the years that his _clothes_ had a foreign air about them – something about the cut of his garments looked different from the general style of gentlemen's clothes in that day – but his speech and looks were English. He seemed well-bred. _Very_ well-bred, I would say."

"Do you remember anything else from the incident?"

"That is about all I can think of."

"Thank you, Mister Thompson. You have been very helpful. I am grateful for your telling us what happened. We know we have imposed on you, and we shall trouble you no further. If you do think of anything, will you write to us, please?" Ciel nods to Sebastian, who hands over a card that has the name "C. Winter" printed on it, and the address of the manor.

William Thompson nods, and his guests rise. He looks at them curiously, as if he wants to ask what they are investigating, but then seems to think better of it, preferring not to pursue a matter he has let lie for so many decades. His visitors thank him, and he shows them out. They nod politely to one another one last time at the front door, before he closes it quietly, and they return to the carriage.

"What do you think?" Ciel asks.

"I think we should talk elsewhere so that the whole street does not become privy to our investigations," Sebastian replies under his breath.

"We're not talking loudly."

"We can still be heard. Obey your 'tutor' now and get into the carriage."

Ciel growls, but enters the vehicle nonetheless. Sebastian unties the reins, climbs into the box seat, and gets the horses moving. The street is too narrow for them to turn the carriage around without unharnessing the horses. So they clop along to the other end of the street and turn corners to make their way back to the main thoroughfare that will lead them back to Belgravia. Out on the main road, he keeps the carriage moving as smoothly as possible. The street is well lit and still busy with traffic at this time of night. By the time he pulls up in front of the town house an hour later, it is almost half-past nine o'clock.

Finnian has been watching for them through one of the front windows, and hurries out with a lamp to open the gate. Sebastian steers the vehicle onto the driveway and draws to a stop, then descends from the driver's perch.

"Will we leave for the manor tonight, Mister Sebastian?" Finny asks.

"Young Master?" Sebastian redirects the query, stepping up to the body of the carriage with Finny and opening the door, only to find Ciel fast asleep, curled up on the cushioned seat, feet drawn up, hat and stick lying on the other seat.

"The answer to your question would seem to be 'no'," Sebastian remarks wryly to Finny, as Soma and Agni come tripping down the stairs.

The prince and the Brahmin have been concerned about Ciel, considering his earlier comment to them indicating that it was a risky mission he was on. Soma is about to call out Ciel's name when Sebastian turns, a finger over his lips, to warn them not to make too much noise.

"His Lordship won't like to be caught napping," Sebastian says in a soft voice. "Go back to your rooms now while Finny sees to the horses. Don't let him know you've seen him. We shall return to the manor tomorrow morning."

Soma and Agni cannot resist peeking in at Ciel and smiling at the sight before they return to the house to retire for the night. It has been a long day for everyone, after all. Sebastian waits till Finny has unharnessed the horses and led them away to their stalls before leaning into the carriage to say: "Young Master, we have reached the town house."

Ciel does not stir, so Sebastian speaks again, but gets no response. So he lightly taps Ciel on the shoulder, and only then does the earl sit up quickly, mumbling something unintelligible, and blinking at Sebastian, backlit against the open doorway of the house.

"Young Master, we are here."

Ciel takes the proferred gloved hand and steps out of the carriage. Sebastian reaches back in to retrieve his master's hat and walking stick before closing the carriage door. As Ciel ascends the front steps to the house, he follows closely behind all the way in case the boy stumbles, for he is groggy.

Sebastian sets down his master's hat and walking stick on the half-table inside the door, and temporarily puts his own hat beside them so that he can escort Ciel upstairs. The earl sways a little as he takes the first few steps up, and Sebastian is immediately beside him, lifting him into his arms.

"I'm fine," Ciel mumbles.

"Young Master, you have had a long and difficult day. You are worn out. I do not want you to tumble down the stairs."

"I can walk," he insists, but his speech is slurred.

"Prince Soma and Mister Agni are in bed. No one is here to see," Sebastian tells him in a whisper.

"Mmm..." Ciel murmurs, finally giving in somewhat by making no further coherent statements of objection.

Sebastian takes the stairs slowly, rhythmically, tapping out a beat to a slow piece of music only he can hear. By the sixth step, the butler has the satisfaction of feeling the child sag against his chest and drop his head to his shoulder. He lingers on the steps to let his devil's scent infuse Ciel's flesh, so that by the time they are at the top of the stairs, he is content in the knowledge that Agni is not the only protector of the boy who has had his smooth cheek thus resting against him.

Into the bedroom he goes holding his master, finally releasing him carefully to the welcoming embrace of his bed.

"Perhaps you should not bathe tonight? You are very tired."

"No, I want to get clean," Ciel mumbles, sitting up slowly although he can barely keep his eyes open. "I feel grimy. I've been shot at and grabbed, and I almost sweated right through my coat giving His Royal Highness a piece of your mind."

"Not only my mind, but yours also. I do not smell much perspiration on you," Sebastian says, giving him a sniff. "Would it be acceptable if I gave you a sponge bath instead? It would be faster, and you could be in bed sooner."

Ciel nods and allows Sebastian to help him out of the outer coat he pulled on during the cold ride home, the inner coat he wore to the palace, his waistcoat, and his shoes. The butler drapes a dressing gown about his shoulders to keep him warm before going downstairs to the kitchen to see if Finny has kept any water hot in anticipation of the earl's return. This is an old house, and the earl has not as yet agreed to have any modern plumbing put in; so for now, they will have to do things the usual way. Sebastian is pleased to find that the gardener has heated a large pot not too long ago, and put a lid over it to keep the heat in. It will do.

He takes two buckets, covers them to preserve the heat, and carries the buckets upstairs. Ciel has obviously been to the bathroom to relieve himself in the chamberpot, judging by the disarray of his shirt and trousers, and is now without his eye patch, blinking owlishly into empty space in an attempt to remain awake.

Some of the water from one bucket goes into a basin. Washcloths are fetched, and the water tested to ensure that it will not be too hot for the child. Ciel clumsily pulls his ring off his thumb and unbuttons his own shirt while Sebastian slips the long trousers, socks and drawers off him. He begins to sponge him down, first washing his face and neck, taking care to leave his own scent on his cheek untouched. The butler makes certain not to drip water onto the bed, on the edge of which Ciel is still perched so that he will not feel too cold.

When he dips the washcloth back into the basin, wrings it out and starts wiping Ciel's hands and arms, the earl says sleepily: "The man who controlled the succubus fifty years ago was trying to change for the better, if William Thompson's account is accurate. But if he was an associate, or the teacher, of Susan Rothstein, his friend or student did not reach the same enlightenment he did."

"A pity. It would have spared us some trouble, not to mention a bullet and a shirt, if she had followed in her friend's footsteps," his interlocutor replies mildly, dipping the washcloth in the water again before sponging Ciel's chest and back.

"What most interests me is what Thompson said about the man's words to him about the spirits of the evil being hard to swallow," Ciel continues slowly, forcing his thoughts through his tired brain, and ignoring Sebastian's reference to being shot by him. "So he must have begun by sustaining his youth and life on the spirits of those he thought deserved to die, but found them not as nourishing as less corrupt spirits. He must then have thought that he could take some of the spirits of good people without killing them. But his conscience pricked him when he saw how Thompson suffered. That the police have no further records of him after that suggests that he never tried it again. So did he allow himself to age and die? Or did he find another way of extending his life unnaturally?"

"I do not have the answers to those excellent questions." Sebastian is now wiping Ciel's thighs, followed by his shins and calves.

"Can we conclude that as Mister Silver Hair seemed to be a person of conscience fifty years ago, and has not been heard of since, that we can safely leave him alone, and trust that no further attacks of the kind Susan Rothstein and her succubus inflicted will occur in Great Britain?"

"I wish I could tell you so, but as we do not know enough about what happened to the silver-haired man, I cannot give you such an encouraging reply," says the butler, taking the bucket that is half-empty and placing it under Ciel's feet so that he can wash his toes, soles and ankles properly in the water.

"I wasn't demanding an _encouraging_ reply," Ciel mutters. "I merely sought your opinion."

Sebastian smiles and replies: "If you want my opinion, Young Master, it is that the silver-haired man remains an unknown quantity. He does not seem to be evil, but we do not know if he lives, and by what means. If anything could bring him out of his seclusion from the general notice of the world – if he lives – it would be the death of Lady Susan Rothstein. I would therefore recommend that we wait and watch, and not be complacent. We have many fronts to observe. The Prince of Wales must be encouraged along the path he seems willing to take, Sophia Easton may bring trouble once she learns from the servants that it was the Earl of Phantomhive who exposed her sons to the prince, and the mystery of the silver-haired man and his monster must be considered whenever we find a lead that tells us what might have become of them. We must not neglect the curry bread business either, or your sweet and toy business concerns."

"There's no end to my responsibilities," Ciel grumbles.

"That is as it should be, while you have life. You will always be a loyal servant to the crown. But those responsibilities and loyalties should be of justice and honesty, if you do not want to spend your life hiding the unwise deeds of whoever sits on the throne. That will leash you to them forever like a dog. You should be prized for the justice you can uphold for them, not the crimes you can hide for them, if you are to be all that you have the potential to be. Now do you want to wash the rest of yourself, or shall I do that for you too?"

Ciel reddens and snatches the washcloth from him to sponge down his private parts and his bottom.

"You are quite clean now, Young Master," Sebastian says as he finishes.

But the boy states: "You missed a spot on my right cheek."

To Sebastian's chagrin, Ciel then picks up an unused washcloth from the side table, leans down to dip it into the water of the bucket that was not used to wash his feet, and sponges the devil's scent off his face.

" _Now_ I'm clean," says the earl, handing the cloth to him and pulling on a nightshirt.

"Of course. You must sleep. You are worn out, and if you wish to return to the manor early, we shall have to leave immediately after breakfast."

He lifts the bedcovers for Ciel at the same time as the boy starts to crawl under them. He tucks the warm layers over him and puts out the light in the bedside lamp, leaving only one candle lit in a holder. He pours the water in the basin back into the buckets, and carries the buckets out of the room. Then he returns to remove the taper, so that no light will disturb Ciel's rest.

"Sebastian?" Ciel says, turning onto his right side so his face is half-buried in the soft pillow.

"Yes, Young Master?"

"You did very well today."

"I believe that was my line to you."

"It is now mine to you."

"Why, thank you, my lord." In the flickering candlelight, Sebastian's features are unreadable.

"I liked Agni's curry this afternoon," Ciel says, looking keenly at his butler full out of his left eye, and half out of his right.

"Oh? Perhaps I can ask him to–"

"It was nice for a change, but it's not my preference."

"Indeed?"

"When we go back to the manor tomorrow, make me one of your chocolate gateaux."

"Of course."

"And..." Ciel mumbles with the last of his consciousness before he sinks into much-needed slumber, "...if you try leaving any part of me grimy again just because it was where you deposited your bloody scent like a spraying tomcat, I'll squirt dog drool all over you..."

"Yes, my lord."

The devil blows out the candle and leaves the room with a satisfied smile that no one can see in the darkness.


	10. Sustenance

At nine in the morning, two large, gleaming carriages pull up in front of the Earl of Phantomhive's London house.

Four men wearing identical black coats and hats pour out of the second carriage and stand beside the first. From that first vehicle, two men in the same cut and colour of coat alight before one of them turns back to hand a tall lady out of the vehicle.

"Ma'am," he says deferentially as she descends from the carriage and sweeps past him, the skirts of her highly fashionable dark-green dress brushing against his trouser legs.

"This is the house?" she demands, from under a magnificent green hat fringed with a black veil that is much more ornamental than practical, for it is so sheer and short that it hides none of her features – strong, proud, and handsome rather than beautiful – nor her fair hair, which is abundant and natural despite her being near the age of fifty. She looks grim, and whenever Sophia Easton looks grim, she looks her best.

"Yes, Ma'am. This is the Earl of Phantomhive's house," answers the man who helped her out onto the pavement.

"Open the gate."

"At once, Ma'am."

The six men in the identical coats move towards the residence. The gate is locked, but they have strong metal tools with them which they employ to break the lock. All of their party, except for the two coachmen, enter the driveway and surround the house. Sophia Easton remains on the driveway, standing directly in front of the closed main door, until one of the men returns to her side to report: "The house seems to be empty, Ma'am. No one appears to be inside."

"Ask the neighbours," she commands.

"That will alert them to..."

"Let them be alerted. Do you think I care?"

The man runs off to the big house next door and heads for the servants' entrance. He speaks to a footman there, who calls out to other members of the staff for better information, and the man soon has his answer. He returns to his mistress and reports: "The servants in that house say that the Earl of Phantomhive and his party left at eight o'clock this morning. They locked up the house and drew all the curtains before leaving, which according to those servants suggests that they have returned to the Phantomhive mansion outside London. Shall we break down the door and smash everything inside?"

"Don't bother. We'll be doing exactly that to his precious mansion soon enough, once we determine the best plan of attack."

"We've come prepared to damage this place, though. We've learnt the layout of the house and all. So if you want to, we can still–"

"Do not waste another moment here. We shall look at our plans again, learn about the Phantomhive mansion and what its weak points are, then in a few days, you can smash whatever you please in there."

She turns, sweeps out of the compound and back into her carriage, not bothering to wait to be helped up by any of her assistants. The men pour back towards the two carriages, and as they whip around and run to the vehicles, leaping in one after the other, some of their coats flap open in the wind so that the curious servants from the neighbouring houses who have come out to look at them can see that under those coats, they are armed with daggers, guns and cruel-looking implements.

Once the coaches drive away, the cook who was called to the door by the footman turns to the young man and says to him: "Best inform Mister Jones and tell 'im to use the telephone to ring them Phantomhive servants – he took kindly to that good-natured young gardener oo was 'ere wi' the earl this time, and he'll want to warn 'em about what's just 'appened."

"Was that who..." the footman begins.

"Yeah, it were. That were Mrs Easton. Tell Mister Jones to tell the Phantomhive servants it were that Sophia 'I-am-a-descendant-of-a-Duke-of-York' Easton. Frightful lady. Never forget, I will, 'ow she slapped my poor old mistress in a dreadful temper over some trifling matter or other, right before everybody at the dinner party jus' when I was called out to speak to one of the guests who wanted to congratulate me on my soufflés, that time when I was still cook for the Shiltons."

***

If the earl and Sebastian had left Finnian behind when they went to London, they would no doubt be drawing up before the Phantomhive manor now to the gardener's rapturous, unrestrained cries of "Lord Phantomhive!" and "Mister Sebastian!"

But as Finnian is with them, riding on the back perch of the carriage while Sebastian drives, they have a less noisy reception from Baldroy, Mey-Rin and Mr Tanaka. Baldo has a loud enough voice, but he is not as immature as Finny, so all he does is salute them with a lopsided grin on his face as they drive up, while Mey-Rin blushes and coos: "Oh Your Lordship!" and "Ohhh, Mister Sebastian!", followed by a deeper blush and an "Ooooh, Mister Agni..."

Sebastian does not sigh audibly as he springs down from the box seat to open the carriage door, but the sigh is written all over his face as he anticipates the trials of returning to the company of all three of the individuals whose considerable talents unfortunately do not run to housework, cooking, or gardening. And of course there is Mister Tanaka, who can do almost nothing. That he retains his place is owing to his present incompetence having been caused by the terrible injuries he sustained at the hands of the Phantomhives' enemies, on the day Ciel's mother and father, and Sebastian the dog, were killed, and Ciel himself was abducted.

"Your Lordship, Mister Sebastian," Baldo says once the passengers have dismounted. "We received a telephone call from the butler at the Goldrich house in London, near the town house, not an hour ago. Seems some lady called Sophia Easton and a gang of black-coated men broke the lock on the gate at about nine o'clock and entered the compound, but then left after that. The house itself appears to be intact, according to them."

"So she's not wasting any time making trouble," Ciel muses. "Let her try. If she comes here, we'll be ready for her."

"Expecting unwelcome visitors, are we?" Baldo grins even more widely. "I could do with a spot of action..."

"Baldo, take this pack of food and put it in the kitchen – and do not touch it once you have set it down on the counter," Sebastian interrupts the cook sternly. "This is to be our lunch and dinner. If you set fire to it or blow it up, we shall be obliged to roast you and eat you instead."

Baldo grumbles, but obeys.

"Finnian, bring the cases down from the roof of the carriage so that Mey-Rin can carry them inside."

"Yes, Mister Sebastian."

"Mister Tanaka, perhaps you can prepare a pot of tea?"

The old steward nods eagerly and goes back into the house.

Sebastian decides that as Finny has been good with the horses, and has neither broken the animals' bones nor the carriage while in London, he will leave him to see to the creatures again. Finny is delighted, for he loves animals more than he does plants, although he must always rein in his strength when dealing with them, so that he does not hurt or kill them unintentionally.

Prince Soma has already gone inside with Ciel, so Agni turns to Sebastian, asking: "Is there anything I can do, Mister Sebastian?"

"You are a guest. You ought to go in and relax. But if you cannot do that, then you may wish to make certain that Baldroy is not attempting to cook the meat in the package by lighting sticks of dynamite under it."

"Of course," Agni says with a chuckle, and heads for the kitchen.

Sebastian goes into the drawing room to find that Tanaka has brought out a pot of green tea for the prince and the earl. The butler holds in yet another sigh, for green tea seems to be all that Tanaka knows. He himself would have chosen something more robust to revive the young master after the two-hour coach ride – perhaps one of the stronger-flavoured Chinese teas. But green tea it shall have to be for the time being.

"I could do with more rest," Ciel declares, taking a deep draught of the tea before putting down his cup and stretching his arms, fingers interlaced, palms facing out.

"So could I," Soma echoes, following up with a yawn. "Yesterday was exhausting. I'm glad Agni and I have four days to recover here before returning to London to leave for Denmark."

"Prince Soma can take as long a nap as he likes after lunch, but Your Lordship has missed several days of your usual lessons, and should resume at least some of them this afternoon," Sebastian says.

"I'm too tired for–" Ciel begins, before stopping himself in the middle of his protest.

"Ciel, you should rest," Soma says, yawning again.

"No," the earl says quietly. "There is much to be done, and much to learn."

Before Sebastian can speak again, Ciel repairs to his study, where he inspects the correspondence which was not forwarded to him in London. Nothing very urgent demands his attention, although a few matters are better dealt with sooner rather than later.

The head designer at the Funtom toy company has sent drawings of a new family of plush rabbits intended to be launched this year. They look well enough, but Ciel cannot tell if they will be sufficiently appealing until he sees them made into proper toys – the stitching, plumpness, firmness, facial expressions and the feel of the hair will all affect their attractiveness, things which cannot be completely told through pencil and paper, however talented the artist.

He writes a few remarks beside the drawings about what he would like to see in the finished products, and adds a note asking that a sample of each of the rabbits proposed be made up and sent to the manor, to Mr Tanaka. Naturally, Mr Tanaka never processes packages from Funtom – Sebastian goes through all mail and parcels, and directs the appropriate ones to the earl.

The butler knocks and enters briefly to say: "Young Master, I have rung Professor Cox, and he is able to come in for an hour-long history lesson at two o'clock. Mister Last, unfortunately, is fully engaged today, so I shall conduct your fencing lesson at three."

Ciel nods to dismiss Sebastian, and returns to his correspondence.

He reads two more letters, one that only requires his signature to approve the ordering of certain grades of raw ingredients for the curry bread, and another that is purely information about the rent the Phantomhive estate has received during the latter half of last year from the tenants on land it owns. He checks to see that all the figures are correct, and pens a quick letter to the manager of the estates to make certain that he does not attempt to raise the rent until the next time property taxes increase.

That done, he yawns and stretches. He is still tired from all the excitement of yesterday, and wonders if he should allow himself to doze off in the study... but no, surely he can do better than that, at least for a little while...

He goes quietly down the long passageways of his mansion and ascends the stairs closest to his bedchamber. He enters his room, shuts the door behind him, pulls off his shoes, and dives onto his bed. He has not done this for a long time, but he is so sleepy, and the bed feels so good – dozing off in the chair at his desk simply does not compare. He stretches his body, arms reaching above his head and legs straining in the opposite direction, back arching, and then falls limp with a contented sigh.

He feels himself sinking, sinking, both into blissful unconsciousness, as well as physically, his weight pressing down the plump bedcovers, only that the descent into sleep seems to make him feel as if he is bodily sinking to a far greater depth than is possible, because if he were really travelling down so far, he would have melted through the bed by now and landed on the floorboards. So sleepy, so...

"Young Master?"

Ciel starts up into a sitting position, legs splayed in front of him, like a small child who is sitting on the floor playing with his toys. He gasps at the sight of his butler standing by the wardrobe, looking rather smug.

"How did you...?" the earl splutters angrily.

"How did I enter without your hearing me? I managed that magical feat by already being here when you came upstairs."

"What?"

"I knew you would come up."

"How?"

"Why did you not simply tell me how exhausted you were?" Sebastian asks, approaching the bed. "I realised how very tired you must be only when you started to protest the idea of having any lessons, and _then_ agreed to go ahead with them. You always do what you think you cannot do, just to show that you can. I should not have insisted upon your picking up where you left off at once. I shall ring Professor Cox and ask him to come tomorrow."

"No," Ciel says firmly. "He has agreed to come; we should not cancel the appointment. And he will only be here for one hour. I can manage that."

Sebastian smiles and begins to slip his master's stockings off his feet. "You are as determined as ever to do what is necessary," he remarks.

"Leave my stockings alone," Ciel orders, pushing the butler's hands away and climbing down from the bed before striding across the room to the spot where he has left his shoes. "I shouldn't have crept upstairs like this. I should be making plans for the sweet factory... hey, what are you doing? Put me down!"

For Sebastian has come swiftly up behind him to seize him under his arms, and is now carrying him back towards the bed.

"Let me go! I'm not a baby!"

But his butler deposits him on the bed, just in the right spot for him to recline on the pillows. "I am pleased to have such a determined young master to groom, but my master often forgets that he must also be a child, and human, at the right times."

"Stop treating me like an infant!" Ciel demands, trying to sit up, only to have his butler take advantage of that movement to slip his jacket off before bodily pressing him back against the bed.

"If you do not wish to be treated like an infant, perhaps you ought to know your own limitations like an adult does, and act sensibly."

"Limitations? If something must be done, it must be done," Ciel states angrily.

"Undoubtedly," Sebastian murmurs, unbuttoning the topmost fastenings of Ciel's shirt, and loosening the tie. "Still, one in a body as fragile as yours needs more rest to recover from his exertions. If you do not want me to cancel the appointment with Professor Cox, then I strongly recommend that you miss lunch, and sleep till half-past one. I will wake you up in time to be dressed and ready for the lesson with the professor. Then for a change of pace after that academic trial, I shall conduct your fencing lesson. Following that, you may reward yourself for your hard work by having as many slices as you like of the chocolate gateau I shall start making for you very soon, as promised."

"You are treating me like a stupid child again."

"Hardly, my lord."

"I could just say no, and order you to make it all go away, you know – except the cake, of course," Ciel says, speculatively, studying Sebastian keenly through his exposed left eye.

"You could, but you will not, because even you, who can play any game according to your own rules, know well that such play would be contrary to your strictness with yourself. And if you were to forget that, and try to make it all go away purely out of laziness, then I would make certain to get rid of the cake as well."

"Bastard," Ciel mutters, closing his eyes.

"Every inch."

It takes very little time for the earl to fall asleep, for he needs the rest. Once Sebastian is certain that his master is no longer conscious, he returns to the kitchen, where he begins to oversee lunch preparations for the servants and Prince Soma. Having gained a minute amount of confidence in Finnian's ability to learn in London, he now takes the risk of baking the chocolate gateau while supervising Baldo as he cooks the lunch, assisted by an encouraging Agni.

"No dynamite. No guns. No bombs," says the butler. "Save those for the Easton thugs when they come."

Baldo grumbles, but does not waste the opportunity of learning from two skilled cooks who are ready to teach. Lighting a normal fire and stirring up ordinary things rather than explosive ingredients in pots is dreadfully dull for the former military man and mercenary, but if this is what it takes to do all parts of his job well without blowing up the kitchen every three months, he will do his best.

At the end of an hour and a half, the cook has a very passable chicken pie, greenhouse salad dressed with a lightly chilli-flavoured oil, and a soft-meringue and cream trifle as a sweet to serve to the prince and his manservant, and for the rest of the household staff to share. It does not meet Sebastian's exacting standards, and he would not dream of offering any of it to his master, but it will do for everyone else.

At half-past one, Sebastian wakes Ciel, cleans his teeth, and sees that the boy is feeling much better for having napped through lunch. To sustain him during the history lesson, in which he is to learn important truths about how the greatest of empires may fall into ruin, Sebastian gives him shortbread biscuits, and ensures that Mey-Rin plies both student and tutor with Chinese tea from two to three o'clock.

"Toast with butter, and half a sausage for energy before fencing," Sebastian says, presenting Ciel with a plate of the said items, as they walk towards the recreation room after thanking the professor for his valuable time and bidding him goodbye.

Fortunately, Soma is still taking his afternoon nap, while Agni is chivalrously assisting a swooning Mey-Rin with the heavier housework. Otherwise, Ciel would most likely have them for an audience again, and Soma would almost certainly wish to try fencing once more, despite knowing none of the rules.

"Come now, Young Master," Sebastian sighs five minutes into the lesson. "You do realise that I am going very easy on you? A competitive opponent would have hit you twenty times by now."

"Shut up," Ciel growls, steeling himself for another thrust, which he performs more quickly this time, coming closer to making a mark on his butler's body.

"You are leaving yourself too open," Sebastian remarks, touching Ciel once more with the point of his epee. "Typical of one who so often allows himself to be kidnapped."

Ciel's exposed eye narrows, and he darts in at Sebastian, forcing the butler to parry the blade away to avoid being touched by it.

"Better, Young Master. Anger can lend you speed, strength and purpose, but it may also cause loss of control and steadiness." So saying, the butler whips his blade back towards the earl, and twists the boy's epee out of his hand.

Ciel is displeased at being so disarmed, but everything is a lesson to be learnt, so he picks up his weapon, prepares for another round, and does better this time.

"To provide you with more motivation, look what I have had Baldo bring up," Sebastian tells him as the door opens at half-past four. The cook enters bearing a glistening chocolate gateau on a cake plate, along with small serving plates, forks and a knife.

"Would you please cut one slice and put it on a plate, Baldo?" Sebastian asks politely.

"Sure," the man replies, looking with amusement at his master and the butler clashing blades.

Sebastian leaps backwards to the sideboard where the cook is holding out the serving plate with a single slice on it, displaying its rich layers of glossy chocolate, thick chocolate cream, and chocolate sponge.

The butler takes the plate out of the man's hand and says: "Thank you, Baldroy. You may leave. The other cake in the kitchen is for our guests, and for the rest of you. Now, Young Master, forget the restrictive rules of fencing for a moment – if you can take this slice of cake from me, or even touch it with the point of your blade, you can start eating it that very moment. Otherwise, you shall have to wait another half-hour, till the end of our lesson."

Ciel needs no further encouragement. He lunges at the plate with his epee, imagining spearing the cake with the point and letting it slide down onto the guard, off which he will eat it.

But Sebastian glides away so smoothly that the cake dances out of reach, yet is never in the least danger of falling off the plate. Again and again Ciel tries, only to have the cake slip just beyond him.

It gratifies Sebastian to see that the earl's determination remains unabated despite the steady movement of the clock hand towards the hour mark. Another child would determine after striving hard for twenty-five minutes that the reward of a slice of cake will be coming to him in five minutes anyway, and cease to battle with such ferocity. But the Earl of Phantomhive is not like other children. He puts every ounce of skill he has into the fight, until, at a minute to four, he springs into the air, grabs Sebastian's left wrist with both his hands, and pulls himself up to the plate to take a cheeky bite out of the cake while glaring defiantly at his butler out of his left eye.

"Young Master, when I said to disregard the rules of fencing, I did not mean that we should abandon the use of the blade altogether," Sebastian sighs.

"You didn't say so, did you?" the earl replies sharply through chocolate-smudged lips, releasing Sebastian's wrist and landing nimbly on his feet on the floorboards.

"You were only a minute away from eating this cake in a much more conventional and _dignified_ manner," Sebastian says reprovingly, surrendering the plate to his master.

"A minute can last forever, and it can mean the difference between life and death," Ciel remarks, taking the plate and striding over to the sideboard to pick up a fork with which to eat the rest of the slice. "Dignity hardly matters in that minute."

"Have you begun to care about life and death again?" Sebastian asks as Ciel moves over to a chair and sinks into it to enjoy his reward.

"Would that make me taste better to you?" he queries, not looking at Sebastian.

"Perhaps."

"As good as this cake?"

"So the cake _does_ please you."

"Enough of your ridiculous competition with Agni. He's not competing back, so you are starting to look absurd. And yes, the cake is bloody good."

"As it should be."

"Would I taste better than it?"

"I couldn't say, as I am not one for cake."

"You don't know how your own cake tastes?"

"I know how it tastes to you."

"That's all you care about?" Ciel studies Sebastian keenly.

"To perform my duties to the best of my ability, yes."

"So if you don't want it, I can eat the rest of it?" Ciel asks with intent.

"I would not advise that, as it will ruin your appetite for dinner. You can always have more in the evening, once you have eaten your meal."

"You are addressing me like a baby again."

"You are behaving like a baby. A more mature child would not eat too many sweets before dinnertime."

"I've earned this cake."

"Yes you have, but it is unnecessary to consume it all in one sitting."

"Do you really not care how it tastes to you?"

"What matters is how it tastes to you."

"Have some."

"No, thank you."

"I insist. A great chef should always taste his own food before offering it to his master."

"Unnecessary, when the master so obviously enjoys the food that it is all over his face."

"Do I have to give you an order?"

" _Really,_ Young Master – you would go so far as to say: 'Sebastian, I _command_ you to taste this cake'?" the butler asks with a smirk, in a wicked imitation of the earl.

Ciel glares at him.

"But _if_ you insist..." Sebastian gives in with a good humour, removing the glove from his right hand. With his uncovered fingers, he wipes the smeared chocolate off Ciel's lips with his thumb and his first two fingers, then licks it off his own fingertips.

"Well?" Ciel demands. He has not expected his butler to taste the cake this way, but it does not deter him from getting an answer to his query.

"It is tolerable on its own, but certainly improved for being mixed with the flavour of your perspiration, and the scent of your flesh."

"Then it would taste even better if you ate it right out of my mouth," Ciel remarks casually, before it occurs to him that he has said something not entirely appropriate.

The boy flushes a little, as Sebastian traces his lips once more with a black-nailed fingertip, removing the last traces of chocolate from his skin. "Undoubtedly it would, but perhaps we should not have you grow up quite that fast."

Ciel growls. "I meant–" he starts to say, before realising that he does not know how to finish.

"I know. That is why you sometimes need to be treated like a child, because you _are_ one."

"I might never have had to be anything else. You could have had me. To eat. Then I would not have to do all this work just to grow up."

"My loss."

"Fool."

"Although with you around, I can always extract some flavouring for the rest of my food," Sebastian muses. "A little blood here, a little sweat there..."

"Twisted bastard."

"Every inch."

***

At that same moment in London, John Jarvis the vicar approaches the gate of the house that he has been told belongs to the Earl of Phantomhive and stands before it looking up at the building, only to find himself accosted there in the street by a plump woman. By the apron she wears, she appears to be a cook.

"You're not here to make more trouble, are you?" she asks suspiciously. "They've 'ad trouble enough today."

"N-no, Madam," he replies hastily, alarmed. "What trouble?"

"Someone 'oose name I'll not mention broke the lock of the earl's gate today, and they've 'ad to send for a new lock. So if yer not 'ere for trouble, what might you be about?"

"I came here in the hope of seeing the Earl of Phantomhive. He helped me out of a difficulty a few days ago, but I did not know who he was at the time. Now that I've learnt his identity and London address, I wanted to thank him in person. I am John Jarvis, vicar of the Church of the Trinity in Lambeth..."

"Well, the earl left for his mansion this morning," says the cook, looking slightly less hostile now that she sees that he is not attired at all like Mrs Easton's men, nor does he have their cold, hard looks. "You'll 'ave to try calling again when he next comes to London."

"I see. I shall do that, then, when I next hear that he is in London. Thank you, Madam."

He tips his hat to her and turns to leave, but she calls out to him: "Look 'ere, Mr Jarvis. If you've come on foot from Lambeth, you've 'ad quite a walk in the cold. I'm cook at the Goldriches' next door, and the master and mistress ain't dining at 'ome today, so I'm not too strapped. Why don't you come into the kitchen for some hot tea and a bite o' hot food before you go?"

"Why, that's very kind of you, Mrs..."

"Mrs Petrie."

"Thank you, Mrs Petrie. I would be delighted. I was given a ride part of the way by one of my parishioners in his hansom, so I haven't walked the entire distance."

"Cold enough in a hansom, and on foot, so you'd best come in for tea. Our butler Mister Jones might even 'ave the address of the mansion for you, as he knows one of the servants there reason'bly well, so you can write to the earl if you want."

"That would be wonderful."

As the two of them walk towards the house next to the earl's, Percival Ambrose watches and listens from the shadow of the trees across the road. He cannot actually hear most of what is spoken, but his companion repeats the words to him.

"Well, Carsten," he says, when the other has told him all that has been spoken. "Is this not a sign to us? That a holy man has taken an interest in the Phantomhive boy?"

"I cannot say, master."

"I believe it is. I think it means that we ought to make contact with him. But we must determine the right moment to do that. It may not be appropriate for us to go a-calling just now. With Sophia Easton out for his blood, the boy and his devil will be in for a very busy time."


	11. Caught

The first time Sophia Easton's thugs trespass on Phantomhive land as they spy on the manor by night, something happens. Those who survive later ramble about a "terrible black whirlwind" incapacitating them, and a "great black bird from hell" bearing them, half-dead with terror, through the air.

What Sophia Easton knows is that on the night she sends six men to scope out the Phantomhive grounds, she wakes in her bed to strange sounds coming from within her bedroom. She lights a lamp only to reveal all six strung up together in a great, struggling bundle, tightly bound and gagged, hanging by their feet from her ceiling, with no sign of how they could have been borne into her home. One man is dead – not at the adversary's hands, but from drowning in his own vomit, which could not leave his mouth through the gag.

Mrs Easton does not scream. She is not that kind of woman. She roars for her maids, who come stumbling out of their beds, and it is they who shriek at what they find in their mistress' bedroom, which reeks of the stench of the men's half-digested food, sweat and raw fear. The lady herself, however, has not got to where she is by beating hasty retreats when things do not go her way. And the burning anger at how her stupid sons have been trapped only grows. It has grown with each refusal of the Prince of Wales to see her or reveal what crime her sons have committed, except to write a curt note stating they are guilty of treason, and that she would be wise not to broadcast it.

She may have connections enough to wound the royal family to some extent, but the prince and queen remain her best chances for recovering her sons alive through their forgiveness of whatever those idiot offspring of hers have done. Therefore, they must live, and it is the Phantomhive boy who has to pay. So the next night, she sends fifteen men out. She, her servants and their dogs watch every entrance and window. But in the morning, a housemaid's cries fill her house as her front door is opened to reveal all fifteen, bound and gagged, on the doorstep. It is impossible – they have watched even the front entrance all night. Yet, the impossible has been done.

Two men are dead this time. Again, not killed by the adversary, but by one accidentally shooting two comrades while struggling to free himself from his restraints "in the air", as they report.

Mrs Easton, being Mrs Easton, presses on. She makes enquiries with her contacts in Great Britain and the Continent, including the remnants of the Ferro family. From different sources, she learns that something unholy resides within the Phantomhive manor, and besieging them is no simple matter. Armed with that information, she consults worshippers of things evil, and again sends out her men, twenty-five of them, armed with spells and incantations. But again, the unimaginable happens, and they are delivered back to her in a bruised and bloodied tangle of limbs.

At last, she resorts to one of her late husband's contacts, an ancient funeral-business owner known as The Undertaker. The man is disgusting and his shop loathsome, but she needs information, and her late husband regarded this man as having the best. However, when she tells the old creature with the unkempt hair and filthy nails what she wants, he erupts in laughter, and laughs so hard that she thinks he will never stop.

"Ha ha ha ha HA!" he howls, drooling liberally and clutching his sides so tightly that she imagines he has stabbed himself with his fingernails. "Oh, Mrs Easton! You have given me the best laugh I have had in weeks! Wage war on the Phantomhive manor? HA HA _HA_!"

When she gathers every ounce of her dignity and coldly demands what he means, he gathers what remains of his breath and gasps out while trying not to laugh again: "Leave it. You will not get past that which is most unholy in that manor, unless you have _other_ ways in."

"What other ways?" she asks greedily.

He refuses to say. She would shoot him there and then for his contempt, were it not that she has attempted to kill him before in a pique of temper at point-blank range, and failed spectacularly. Besides, he is a useful source in other ways. So she turns on her heel and marches out, knowing that she needs an alternative way in.

Once more, she asks her sources – but her legitimate, social sources this time, since the underground ones have failed. Normally, a lady whose household has suffered a scandal such as having two sons arrested for treason would be shut out by the upper and middle classes, cut dead socially. But apart from her being Sophia Easton, who believes herself above the rules, there is the useful fact that no one knows her sons are incarcerated in the Tower. So she asks ladies and gentlemen of fashion, and people familiar with every noble house in Great Britain and the Continent. Finally, from the lips of gossipmongers and innocent, prattling folk, she gets the answer she wants.

***

"Are you sure you have enough money?" Ciel asks Soma and Agni as they wait in the foyer for the Prince of Wales' men to arrive. It has been arranged that Prince Edward will send a carriage and attendants to pick up Soma and Agni from the Phantomhive manor early on Monday morning, and take them to the palace, from where they will leave for the port and sail for the Continent.

Soma grins and replies: "I always had all the money I needed at home, even if I had no affection. And we've been living well within our means since we reached England, so I still have lots."

"Mainly because you've been living off _me_ ," Ciel mutters.

Soma, accustomed to the boy's grumpiness, throws his arms around him. "I'm going to miss you!" the prince cries, while the earl scowls and tries to free himself.

Agni, meanwhile, is speaking in a low voice to Sebastian: "Are you sure you do not want me to stay? Those people have been watching the manor for days. Despite your getting rid of them each time, they always return. They will make another move soon."

"It is very kind of you, Mister Agni, but please enjoy your visit to the Continent and take good care of Prince Soma," Sebastian smiles. "I did not know, though, that you were aware of my nocturnal activities. I am surprised you did not offer to help."

"Why would I, when you were managing so competently?" Agni asks amusedly. "I would not wish to intrude on your territory further than you think I already have."

"The carriage is approaching," Finnian announces from inside the front window.

An attendant from the prince's household is shown in. He greets the Indian prince and the earl, and with Sebastian's help carries the trunks out. With Ciel's authorisation, Sebastian discreetly slips a sum of money to Agni, telling him that it should be held for Soma, in case his expenses are higher than expected. One more round of goodbyes and many sighs from Mey-Rin later, the vehicle rolls away. When it disappears over a rise in the road, the manor goes into wartime mode for the day.

"Go about your usual indoor duties while remaining armed," Sebastian says to the staff. "This is the first time they are approaching the manor in the day, so something is afoot. Yet, they are keeping to the forest borders, and we cannot strike until they trespass on the master's lands. Do not step out of doors without cover or linger at windows. They have snipers among them."

Baldo, Mey-Rin and Finny nod, and Tanaka looks as if he understands, although it is hard to tell how much is getting through to him. Sebastian realises that if the enemy launches a full-scale assault on the manor in broad daylight, he may not be able to dispose of them in his usual way without revealing his true nature. It may come down to keeping the master and Tanaka deep inside the manor, away from the windows, while the rest of them pick off the invaders.

No one else will come. The Lady Elizabeth Midford has been told through a letter written by Sebastian but signed by Tanaka that her cousin is still in London, so she will not visit on an impulse, as she is wont to do. All the tutors too believe the earl is away again. The regular tradespeople have been asked to temporarily stop deliveries. If some poor soul wanders onto the grounds into the crossfire, there will be little they can do about it without risking their own defences. Sebastian would not object to Ciel ordering him to slit the mercenaries' throats, and that of their mistress too, but the boy has thus far refused to kill people who "have not done anything yet". So they wait to see what else will be done by those whose lives they have spared. Sebastian does not leave his master's side all that day, until Ciel is nearly ready to order him back to hell.

Hellish, indeed, are the offerings for lunch, tea and dinner. Without Sebastian's and Agni's guidance, and with the sternest injunctions not to blow up anything in the kitchen, Baldroy only dares come up with egg sandwiches for elevenses, orange biscuits for tea, and a chicken stew for dinner. Ciel eats without complaint, but does not eat much, leaving more room than necessary for what remains of a sponge-and-apricot-jam cake that Sebastian baked for him on Sunday.

"Are you not glad that you did not eat the whole cake yesterday?" Sebastian remarks, smirking.

"Hmm," is Ciel's only sour response besides taking a large forkful of jam-soaked sponge to chase away the taste of the bland stew.

Still, the attack does not come. More disturbingly, the men withdraw when the sun sets, and disappear to wherever their base is. Sebastian does not know why. He could find out, but he does not wish to leave Ciel's side at present. He can only order the staff to keep watch in shifts through the night.

"What are they waiting for?" Baldroy growls from beside the window of the recreation room, where he scans the grounds through a spyglass.

Sebastian would do this much better, and without a spyglass too; even Mey-Rin, with her remarkable, long-distance vision once her glasses are off, would see better in the dark than the chef. But Sebastian is keeping the young master occupied with a game of chess, while Mey-Rin has been sent to bed so she can wake at three in the morning to take the next shift.

"Mrs Easton was waiting for the Prince of Wales to leave the country while her men scoped out the manor," Ciel mutters as he thinks through two promising moves with either his knight or his rook. "Lord Randall warned me she was furious, demanding an audience with the Prince, and even the Princess of Wales, to plead for her sons. But the prince refused to see her, and the princess would only meet her in a personal capacity. Having failed there, she seeks revenge on me, and has been mustering all her mercenaries."

Ciel moves his knight and sits back to see what Sebastian will do. The butler is not seated, but standing beside the game table polishing silverware. He only glances at the chessboard whenever the boy makes a move, and bends down to shift his own pieces in response.

"I don't know how Sebastian sent them packing these few nights, but they seem to have worked out that they shouldn't hang around after dark," Baldroy mutters as he looks out over the grounds, chewing on a cigarette, which the butler has absolutely forbidden him to light while Ciel is in the room. "We should just get the Commissioner to pick them up in London and question them."

"They remained on public land today, without trespassing on my grounds," Ciel remarks, frowning as he sees that Sebastian's move could put his queen in danger within a few steps unless he moves to defend her, or launches his own attack to force the butler to rethink his strategy. He decides to attack. "I've told Randall to leave this to me. The police have limited resources. They can't be sending squads out here just to observe those idiots dancing around the perimeter of my lands. Besides, what happens on Phantomhive land has nothing to do with them."

"The Prince of Wales has sailed for the Continent, so Mrs Easton is waiting for something else," Baldroy says, scanning the grounds again. "Where'd she get so many men from, anyway?"

Sebastian plots a new line of attack as the young master aggressively threatens his queen in retaliation.

"Her late husband made a fortune through trade, and an even greater fortune through connections with large criminal families on the Continent," Ciel murmurs, as he wonders whether to press on with his attack or move his queen into a better position to defend his king. "Tanaka in his more lucid moments has said that Her Majesty never asked my father to move against Easton, because he never embarrassed Great Britain much or threatened the crown, largely limiting his criminal activities to Italy and Spain while doing mostly legitimate business in England and Ireland. So the Eastons were never an old Phantomhive nemesis. But since his death five years ago, his widow has ruled his empire and his useless sons. His thugs are loyal to her, thanks to her strength of will, her wealth, and her aggressiveness in expanding her legitimate and criminal territories."

Ciel shifts a bishop, waits for his opponent's response, then moves his queen. Both bishop and queen are now in positions that will defend his king while making it possible to threaten Sebastian's pieces.

The butler smiles and shifts a pawn yet another square up the board, inching it towards the other end, to see how long his master will wait to take the bait. But two hours later, with half the pieces sacrificed on both sides, the black and white kings and queens remain standing. Ciel decides to continue the game another time, for it is late.

"I'm going to bed," he announces.

Sebastian goes upstairs with him after ensuring that Baldroy knows when to wake Mey-Rin, and when to tell Finnian to rest. After helping his master with his bath and nightclothes, however, he makes no move to leave the room.

"You're not planning to stay here all night, are you?" Ciel asks irritably. "As if we haven't had enough of one another all day."

"I do not like it that they have not attacked, despite the Prince of Wales' departure from the country, and Agni's departure from the manor. I had no qualms about leaving you alone in your room before Prince Soma and Agni left, but not now."

"Lock the windows, stick tall furniture in front of them, and go away," Ciel sighs. "I'm not having you in my bedroom through the night."

"Sleep, and you will not know that I am here."

"I'll know."

"Sleep."

But all night, the attack does not come. Ciel opens his eyes long before dawn, restless after a troubled night, to see his butler standing by a window, looking out through a gap between the drapes and the wall.

"Nothing?" the boy mumbles sleepily.

"Nothing."

"Damn them. I suppose I can only expect burnt toast with rancid butter for breakfast as our chef is still helming the kitchen?"

Sebastian presents a suitably apologetic face to Ciel and replies: "Regrettably, the fare may be worse than that, for Baldroy's next shift begins at nine in the morning, and only Mister Tanaka has been available to do anything in the kitchen."

Ciel throws himself back on the pillows and groans: "We'll be having green tea and more green tea."

"I shall be grateful if he does not give us green tea with seasoning powder."

Fortunately, Tanaka is in good form this morning, and manages to present the earl with unburnt toast, strawberry jam and English tea.

"Thank you, Mister Tanaka," Sebastian smiles. "Please rest now."

Ciel is only halfway through the toast when Mey-Rin yells from somewhere above them in the manor: "Someone's coming!"

The earl continues eating calmly, looking on in silence as everyone scrambles to their positions while Sebastian lifts one edge of a curtain. Instead of the army of mercenaries they expect to see pouring over the grounds, however, there is nothing but a lady's carriage, drawn by fine bay horses, rolling towards the manor grounds.

Sebastian narrows his garnet eyes. Something is not right – he can sense it in his demon bones. It worsens when he sees that the carriage is the familiar one of the Marchioness of Midford, Ciel's Aunt Francis – Frances she may be to formal society, but "Francis" she was to her brother the late earl, and Aunt Francis she is to the boy who is all that is left of this branch of the family. When the carriage pulls up before the manor, Sebastian knows that something has been done which they do not yet know about, and that it is something they will not like.

He steps outside and bows to Aunt Francis as a coachman who is not her regular driver opens her carriage door.

"Lady Midford," he greets her with the title that emphasises her rank as the wife of the Marquess, rather than the "Lady Francis" he would use to acknowledge her status as the daughter of a former Earl of Phantomhive. The voluminous skirts beside hers within the carriage confirm that someone else has come to the manor with her, and Sebastian already knows from that person's scent who it is, long before he sees her face.

On her visits, Aunt Francis always eyes him suspiciously, for she disapproves of his appearance. She considers him too handsome for a butler, and dislikes the length at which he keeps his hair – although on the latter score she has nothing to complain about, for he trimmed his locks a few days ago. But today, something is wrong. She does not glare at him, or alight elegantly to be greeted by her nephew. Instead, to Sebastian's surprise, she fairly jumps out and asks in a voice that is uncharacteristically frantic for one as disciplined as herself: "Did my daughter arrive here?"

Sebastian, with a growing understanding of what Sophia Easton has done, replies: "The Lady Elizabeth has not visited the manor this morning, my lady – she has not visited in days–"

"I know," Aunt Francis interrupts him impatiently. "Tanaka wrote to say that the earl was still in London, so of course she did not come before this. But a note came from Ciel this morning, asking her to visit him as he had returned home."

"My lady, His Lordship sent no such note."

"I permitted her to go, although the hour at which she was invited to visit seemed unusually early. I sent her off with her maid in the smaller carriage – it's only an hour's ride – she has done this so many times before – but halfway here –"

"Oh, it was terrible," comes the voice from the other person inside the carriage. "I witnessed it."

With that, Sophia Easton steps down from the vehicle and looks steadily at Sebastian.

"Aunt Francis?" Ciel says, appearing at the top of the stone stairs leading to the main entrance of the manor.

"Ciel!" Aunt Francis hastens up the steps to reach him before he can begin to descend. "Ciel, something has happened. Mrs Easton here was a victim too, but she was good enough to run to our house on foot to tell me..."

Ciel stares at Mrs Easton, who is climbing the stairs towards them, Sebastian behind her, watching her every move.

"Dear boy," says the visitor with a smile designed to look like one of commiseration. "You must be brave. I am sure this will all turn out right."

"What are you talking about?" Ciel demands.

"Ciel, Elizabeth was on her way here in my smaller carriage with Paula when some men... _bandits_... stopped the horses, almost killed our coachman, and overturned the carriage!" Aunt Francis cries. "They seized Mrs Easton's carriage too, and threw her and her coachman out of it. They beat Paula badly, and took Elizabeth away in the carriage they stole from Mrs Easton. When Mrs Easton recognised the coat of arms on our overturned vehicle, she ran a mile to the house to tell me what had happened. The doctor has been sent for – Paula and our coachman are unconscious. The marquess is away – I didn't know what to do – I rang the police, then Mrs Easton and I decided at once to come to you, to see if Elizabeth had somehow made it here."

"Lizzie's not here..." Ciel says numbly, looking from his aunt's desperate eyes to the cold ones of Mrs Easton, set in a face which has assumed a sad expression.

"Lady Midford, you are shivering. You should keep warm indoors while we try to solve this terrible matter," Mrs Easton says.

Aunt Francis nods silently, casting one more look over the grounds from the top of the stone stairs, hoping to see the figure of her little daughter in the distance. She is a woman of great strength of character and body, but at this moment, she is simply a mother whose youngest darling has been snatched from the safety of her family. Ciel has never seen this aunt of his look as lost as she does now. He takes her arm and steers her into the morning room, where there is still half a pot of tea that he can offer her, to soothe her somewhat – although it seems a pathetic gesture, when he knows what is to come.

"Aunt Francis, please sit down," he says softly, leading her to the most comfortable armchair in the room. "Sebastian, give my aunt the rest of my tea – there is no time now to make a fresh pot."

Lady Francis does not quite hear the meaning in his words for several seconds, so distraught is she. But as she takes the cup of lukewarm tea from the butler, the words finally sink in.

"No time…?" she begins. "Ciel, what do you mean…?"

Ciel is staring directly at Mrs Easton, whom no one has invited to sit down.

"Where is Elizabeth?" he coldly asks the unwelcome guest.

"Ciel!" Aunt Francis cries. "What is the meaning of this? Mrs Easton has been so kind..."

"Mrs Easton has Elizabeth."

" _What?_ " Aunt Francis gasps, still not understanding the situation.

"Where is Lizzie?" Ciel asks the woman again.

"Nowhere you, or the police, or her mother, or the unholiness within your manor, can find her. Not before she breathes her last," Mrs Easton replies, smiling serenely.

Aunt Francis shoots to her feet. The teacup and saucer on her lap crash to the floor. Her eyes grow wide with a mixture of rage, fear and dawning realisation. "Sophia Easton!" she screams, and lunges at the woman with the speed of the impressively trained fencer and sportswoman that she is.

But Mrs Easton holds up a hand and states firmly, before she can reach her: "I would not try to hurt me if I were in your place, Lady Midford. If I do not return to my men unharmed within half-an-hour, a private signal will go out, and the girl dies. If I do not return to my men unharmed _and_ in the company of no one besides the earl and my driver, the signal goes out, and she dies. It's partly your fault. It was so easy to learn from your circles that your daughter was betrothed to her cousin, and so easy to fool you with a forged note. My job was made simpler by your sending her off with only a weak old driver and a delicate maid."

Aunt Francis has a hand raised, ready to strike Sophia Easton. She is breathing hard, her eyes blazing with shock and fury.

"Aunt Francis," Ciel says. That is all he says, but his voice carries compassion and authority, and a message that he will take care of this.

She glances at her nephew, and sees his father's features in his face. She knows what her father and brother were, and what her too-young nephew is. She knows too that danger invariably visits the Phantomhives. It was a constant threat while she was growing up in this manor – rather, the old manor which this was built to exactly resemble – and the threat took her brother's life three years ago. She has always known that her daughter, upon marrying her cousin, would eventually live with that danger. But she is miserably unprepared for Lizzie to come to harm here and now, well before she is ready to part with her. Yet, because she was born a Phantomhive, she understands that tone in her nephew's voice. She lowers her arm and steps back, leaving her daughter's fate in her fiance's hands.

"Mrs Easton," Ciel addresses her in businesslike fashion. "Release Elizabeth unharmed, and you can do what you please with me."

"It works the other way around," Sophia Easton answers, equally businesslike. "You will come with me, and I will do whatever I please with you. When you are dead, your cousin will be returned alive to her mother."

"My lord," Sebastian says, coming forward for the first time in the morning room. "If you leave here alone with Mrs Easton, both you and Lady Elizabeth will die."

Aunt Francis' breath catches in her throat, but she refrains from speaking.

"Sebastian, can you tell where Elizabeth is?" Ciel asks.

Aunt Francis and Sophia Easton do not fully comprehend the implications behind the earl's question – although Mrs Easton begins to grasp that the butler may have something to do with the "unholy thing" in this manor. They only see that the butler looks grim as he replies: "No, my lord. Not yet."

"Then I must leave with Mrs Easton."

"Alone," she reminds him briskly. "At the merest hint of the presence of another with us, the girl dies."

Sebastian stands stock-still as he waits for the words he does not want to hear. If Mrs Easton's conditions were not so precise, he would seize his master to prevent the enemy from laying hands on him, and whisk him away to find his cousin. But everything is against them: He does not know where Elizabeth is; though he can work at demonic speed, there is a good chance his master will be killed before he can locate the girl; and the conditions Mrs Easton has set are specific, with a time-limit, and will separate his master from him.

As he considers the case with a cunning mind that finds all its cunning of little use now, he hears the dreaded words coming from the earl: "Sebastian, find Elizabeth."

"Young Master..." the butler begins, his voice full of an unspoken – and unheeded – warning.

The earl is ignoring him as he calls out to the other servants: "Baldroy! Mey-Rin! Finnian!"

The three, who have been hiding and listening while watching the grounds to ensure that no one else approaches, enter the room.

"Mey-Rin, stay with Lady Francis until Sebastian brings Lizzie back safely. Baldroy, you and Tanaka are to take charge of the manor until Sebastian returns. Finny, watch the grounds and make certain no one else comes near the house to harm Lady Francis."

They nod silently, helplessly.

"Sebastian, what are you waiting for?" Ciel asks. "I gave you an order."

"My lord, I strongly advise you against this course of action," Sebastian answers, as tightly as anyone in this manor has ever heard him speak.

The butler is closer to the end of the room furthest from the door. The other servants are just inside the door. Ciel, Aunt Francis and Mrs Easton are in the centre. Ciel turns his back to Aunt Francis, Mrs Easton and the servants, and looks full at Sebastian.

"Young Master..." Sebastian says again, the warning note filling his voice.

But Ciel, facing away from everyone except his butler, raises his eye patch and looks straight at the devil out of one marked eye and the other of piercing blue, and says: "Sebastian – _I command you_ to leave here without me, find Elizabeth alive and well, and return her safely to her mother!"

Ciel may look angry, but Sebastian curses inwardly at Sophia Easton as he sees that the child's eyes are hollow, empty of the sparks of mischief and defiance that have danced in them these few days. He glares back at his master for a long second before he bows and intones: "Yes, my lord."

One final look into those beautiful eyes that he may never see with life in them again, and the butler strides out of the morning room, out of their sight.

"He won't find the girl," Sophia Easton states confidently. "Not before _you_ are dead. Let's go. Your fiancée will soon be out of time."

The servants and Aunt Francis step towards Ciel and Mrs Easton, but the earl holds up a hand to stop them. "No," he says firmly. "Do nothing foolish. Stay here until Lizzie returns safely. Don't try to follow me, or Lizzie could be killed."

To his aunt, he says: "Sebastian _will_ find her."

He holds his head high and walks outside. Mrs Easton orders him into the Marchioness' carriage, follows him in, and pulls the door shut after them. She puts her head out through the window and orders her coachman: "Drive to the first point I gave you instructions for."

The man cracks his whip to get the horses moving, and those left behind at the manor can only watch it disappear into the distance with Ciel within it, at the mercy of Sophia Easton, without his butler at his side.


	12. Breath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** This chapter contains a relatively explicit description of sexual and physical abuse of a minor. Please do not read it if you do not like to or do not want to encounter such scenes in a story.

Lizzie does not know where she is. She is inside what feels like a box just large enough to sit up in, in a darkness so deep that she does not know if she has lost the power of sight. She feels ill. The men who dragged her out of the carriage, tearing her from Paula's arms, put something foul-smelling over her nose and mouth. Since awaking inside this box, she has felt dizzy. Her breakfast is threatening to come back out through her mouth if the sensation of sickness does not go away soon.

The sides of her prison are rough to the touch. A splinter pierces her thumb as her hands move over the unyielding surfaces. She gasps, but splinters are the least of her concerns at this time. She ignores the sharp discomfort in her thumb and tries to lift the part of the box above her head by attempting to stand up while jamming her shoulders against it. It does not shift at all, however hard she presses upwards. Then she tests the sides of the box, planting her feet against the surface opposite the one which she has her shoulders against.

Nothing gives. Nothing so much as creaks. She tries again, straining her little limbs harder. It is useless. Panting from the effort, she feels the air around her growing closer. For a few seconds, the heat coursing through her body is a relief from the cold. But a minute later, she shivers, for the sheen of perspiration on her skin is amplifying the chill.

Feeling sicker and much more frightened now, she pounds on the side of the box and screams. She listens intently, hoping for a response to her cry. Only silence comes. She calls out again, and kicks hard against the box. But there is still nothing. And it now feels harder to breathe.

***

A devil knows many things that humans do not, but he is not omniscient. Omniscience belongs to the realm of God, and devils have long been exiled from that world. Sebastian finds Elizabeth's scent at the place where her carriage was overturned, and tracks it a good two miles from that point within half a minute. But at an empty cottage that stands in a disused sheep farm on which shepherds, sheep and dogs have long ceased to live, he loses the scent. Something has been done here to make it hard for him to locate the girl-child.

He stands in the middle of the cramped stone structure and examines the fading evidence of her passage. The elements are broken up, as if someone had thrown over the aura of her being a sheet as solid as glass but soft as cloth, wrapped everything up, then bundled her off elsewhere, leaving only a few escaped particles to linger in the air.

He is hardly the only otherworldly creature that traffics with humankind. He and his master have encountered soul reapers, ghosts, angels, succubi and other spirits in the course of their association, and he knows some humans besides his master have access to the secrets of things beyond the physical plane. Mrs Easton's mercenaries came bearing spells against them one night – though they were so pathetically weak that trying to contain him with them was like attempting to hold back an elephant with a single spider's thread.

Such spells, however, could work effectively to hide a single small human girl from other humans, as well as from someone like him.

He will need more time to find the girl, to carry out this accursed command of his master's before he is permitted to return to his side. He does not know how much longer he has.

***

"Do you know, Lord Phantomhive, that I do not love my sons?" Sophia Easton asks, so casually that she could be asking what he wants for tea.

She is in a faded brown-velvet armchair in the uppermost room of an old mill house. The house stands on land that belongs to her, but has not been tenanted for a long time. The river still flows fast and deep, but the sluice gates before the waterwheel were closed years ago, and the wheel has not turned since. Everything is falling into disrepair, like her life, like the boy before her whose wounds she intends to make certain will never have the chance to heal.

"You have an interesting way of showing how little you care," the boy answers sardonically.

He is not at all afraid, she observes. He does not seem to have shed a single shred of his dignity despite the ignominious state she has put him in.

She has attempted to humiliate him by ordering her men to strip him bare before her and hang him up by his wrists from the roof beams of this small room at the top of the mill house. He has been made to feel pain, as she has had one of her favourites, Thomas, flog him hard enough to draw a few beads of blood from his thin back. She has noticed a strange mark on his flesh, like something branded by a hot iron, but it is of little interest to her. Old wounds are meaningless – it is the new ones she can inflict that she is keen to discover.

"I did not say that I didn't care," she says. "I said I didn't love them. They are stupid creatures, and have been a disappointment to me all their lives. But I care what happens to them, because they are all I have by way of heirs. I have no other children, no grandchildren, not even a blood-nephew or niece – no one to leave everything to. So I care very much that my sons may never return from where you have put them."

"Where they put themselves through their stupidity, you mean," the boy smirks.

She narrows her eyes. He genuinely seems to have no fear.

"You aren't afraid to die," she remarks curiously.

"Hmm," is all he says in answer. It is partly a huff of laughter, and partly a grunt of disdain.

"That makes two of us, Lord Phantomhive. I have worked hard since my husband's death only because my useless sons could do nothing that their father and I have always done as naturally as we drew breath. I have worked ruthlessly for no other reason than to build an empire for them to inherit when I die, an empire that I hope will be large enough and rich enough to sustain them at least as long as they live, even if they fritter the wealth away like water tossed into the gutter. That is my duty as a mother, regardless of the worthlessness of what has emerged from my womb. But if my sons are not to be returned alive to me, then my life means nothing. Why build an empire for strangers to seize? What use are wealth and power and fashion when nothing and no one will remain to carry on my bloodline when I depart from this decaying earth?"

"I could say what a shame it is that a woman of your wealth and talent is so incapable of looking beyond her bloodline that she cannot see all the good things that she could do for other people around her with everything that she has been blessed with," Ciel remarks evenly. "I could say it, but my words would be wasted on you."

"They are indeed wasted on me," she answers. "I care only for my blood. And at present, I also care somewhat for yours – as far as spilling it is concerned. You have taken from me the entire future of my family, stupid though it may be. So I will ask you one last time if you do or do not have the power to persuade the Prince of Wales to pardon my sons."

"Even if I had the power to persuade the prince to pardon your sons, I wouldn't," he says boldly, not a hint of weakness in his voice despite his nakedness. "They murdered a woman named Sally Miles purely for money. The prince may forgive the offence against his own person, but he cannot and will not forgive the murder of an innocent party. Neither will I."

"Nothing I do will persuade you to speak to the prince?" she asks.

"Nothing," he replies firmly.

At a nod from Mrs Easton, Thomas strikes the boy again with the switch he brandishes, and more beads of blood ooze out. But apart from the flinching of his body from the physical pain, the injury does not seem to reach his mind or soul. He locks eyes with her again; in his gaze is nothing but pride. The eye he normally keeps covered is a different shade from his left iris. It looks discoloured, and clouded. She did look closely at it earlier when the patch was removed by Thomas, and saw that its discoloration seemed strangely symmetrical. But once again, she has no interest in old deformities. Only the new ones she can inflict.

"In that case, I shall do to your family what you have done to mine. You are the last of the Phantomhive earls, and the earldom shall never rise again once you are gone, just as there will be no one remaining of my branch of the ancient royal bloodline descended from Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. The cousin to whom you are betrothed shall also die this day. I hear that she has a brother. Although he is no Phantomhive, his mother is, and I shall work at my leisure to arrange for his death, and his mother's too, after you and Elizabeth are gone. But you and the girl will go first."

"You can kill me if you like. But you won't touch the rest of them," he states confidently.

"Say what you please," she remarks. "You are now of little use to me except as an object whose pain can amuse me for a while – only a while, unfortunately, for I mean to kill you well before any souls who imagine themselves rescuers can come for you. I am not among the stupid creatures who hold their prisoners for days or even weeks, hoping to draw out their torture, only to find that they have held them too long when their fun is interrupted by the police, or other saviours. No, I'll hurt you for an hour or so – which will be long enough, believe me – then I'll end it, before anyone can save you."

Her eyes roam calculatively over his thin, undeveloped body. He barely shows the signs of adolescence. Her own sons were little men when they each turned thirteen, but this child seems younger than his years. He is small in stature, his shoulders narrow, muscles offering no sign that they will grow into strength, scarcely a single hair in his armpits or on his crotch, the scrotum tidy and smooth, the flaccid cock still small and neat, with none of the gross, vein-webbed swellings, redness or leakings of maturity. His arms and legs look as if they would snap with the greatest of ease if she were to pick up a stick and swing it at them.

She lifts a knife from a dusty table and tosses it to Thomas.

"The switch bores me. Use that instead."

"What shall I do first, Ma'am? Cut off his ears? His balls? Put out his eyes?" the man asks.

"What? And have him bleed to death immediately? With that pale flesh, he's anaemic, if you ask me. Probably haemophiliac too, like so many inbred aristocrats. Just cut him a little, all over, slowly, enough to make him scream. But not so deep that you strike any large veins. Bleeding to death is not what I have in mind for him."

"Yes, Ma'am," Thomas answers, and gets to work on the earl's left arm.

***

Lizzie feels drowsy. She fights the grogginess. Although it is tempting to sleep and escape the consciousness of her terrifying situation for a while, she dares not waste time in slumber. There must be a way out. Once more, her tiny fingers explore the edges and corners of her prison, hoping to discover a crack that may lead to an escape.

"Ciel," she half-whispers and half-sobs as her fingers pry the edges. "You must be wondering why I never reached your home – you must be looking for me? Mother must know by now? Father's away... he won't know what's happened to me..."

She had been so happy to receive the note this morning, and Mother had been in a good mood. So she had set off, only for their carriage to be stopped along the quiet stretch of country road running through the forest. Poor old Jones – his head must have been cracked open by the wicked man who struck him with that club. And Paula – poor Paula, shrieking hysterically and trying to cling to her, while that other wicked man rained punches on her pretty face with his fist.

Lizzie is crying hard now. She hopes with all her heart that Jones the coachman and Paula are alive. She couldn't bear it if they were to die... or if they were already dead...

_No!_ she thinks. _They can't be dead! And I can't die here!_

She screams and pounds hard on the side of the box again. Still, no one answers, and no one comes.

***

Sebastian cannot find traces of Elizabeth in the air. He needs another strategy for locating her. He resorts to simple leg-work – although for one like him, covering miles of land and making dozens of enquiries takes little more than a quarter of an hour.

He learns that the abandoned sheep farm belongs in name to someone of no account, but that person ultimately belongs to Sophia Easton. And he turns up several other pieces of land that are effectively owned by Mrs Easton although legal documents would never draw a connection between such property and the woman who has his master.

He sets off to those pieces of land, one after the other.

***

Rivulets of blood run down Ciel's arms, which remain bound above his head. His wrists are numb, almost dead to sensation from bearing his weight for some twenty minutes now, and he thinks his shoulders will soon be twisted out of joint. The bright red threads travel down his sides, where they merge with the film of sweat breaking out over his body, pooling into pinkish liquid that creeps over his torso and inches towards his hips. Droplets of mingled sweat and blood have already seeped past the rope that lashes his ankles together, and dripped off his toes onto the floor.

It hurts. It hurts each time the blade drags over his skin with deliberate slowness, to draw out the pain.

The man called Thomas is starting on his back now, scoring it a fraction of an inch at a time with the tip of the knife. All the while, Mrs Easton sits in her armchair and watches him.

He refuses to give her the satisfaction of hearing him cry out. He closes his thoughts to the pain and lifts his head a fraction to look into her eyes. He forces himself to smile at her, and has the satisfaction of seeing her dark pupils shrink to pinpoints of naked rage.

***

Elizabeth tries to call out again, but has no strength. It is so hard to pull the air into her lungs. She wants to draw great, deep gulps of it, but feels as if she will choke each time she tries, for it is as if nothing is entering her body. She panics briefly, then stills herself the best she can, and pulls in shallow breaths, though it runs counter to her instincts. The light breathing calms her a little, but it is getting harder, and she is sorely tempted to sleep.

She closes her eyes.

***

Sophia Easton slaps Ciel hard across the face. There is some small satisfaction in this – this direct contact between her hand and his flesh. It makes his pain more personal to her. As she hits him again and again, she senses something of interest: he takes the pain like a man, but if her hand lingers on his face between slaps while she turns his head this way and that to look at the welts forming on his cheeks, he shrinks from the contact like a shy boy. It is not a response that she can see with her eyes, but something she feels under her fingers, a sense of his skin crawling at her touch.

_So he does not like to be touched,_ she realises with a thrill of triumph.

With a smile, Mrs Easton says to Thomas: "Tom, bring Langton up here, and have him carry up a pail of water."

" _Langton_ , Ma'am?" the man asks in surprise. "But he's no use in this sort of–"

"I know. Bring him up."

The man obeys, and returns in a few minutes with one of his fellow mercenaries, armed with a bucket of water from the river that used to turn the mill wheel. This new man is sleekly dressed and wiry, the kind of thug who would be quick and accurate with a gun, but not much suited to torturing prisoners. Indeed, he glances with distaste at the cuts, blood and welts on the boy's flesh even as he says briskly to his mistress: "You wanted some water, Ma'am?"

"I saw that look on your face, Langton," Mrs Easton says lightly. "Too much blood for your liking?"

"Ma'am...?"

"You think you hide your secrets well, but I know what your tastes run to. Thomas, empty that bucket of water over the earl, so it washes the blood away."

Thomas takes the pail from Langton and does as he is told, throwing the cold water over Ciel, who cannot quite stop himself from gasping as the icy liquid hits him.

"Better now, Langton?" Mrs Easton asks. "Why don't you get started on him? How often do you have the opportunity to get your hands on a high-bred child? Don't pass over this one."

"I'm not sure I..." Langton begins.

"Tom, you may leave," Mrs Easton says to her favourite, who withdraws without further comment – that is why he is her right-hand man.

This other one now, Langton, is far from being among those she prefers to depend on, but he will be most useful here. Once Thomas is out of the room, leaving them alone with the earl, she tells him: "I know you, Langton. You like them very young, don't you? Here's a golden opportunity for you – do whatever you please with him while he remains strung up there. Anything you like. My only condition is that I will watch as you do it."

The man hesitates, but irresistibly, his eyes flick towards the boy, stripped bare, tied up, helpless. Once he _really_ looks, and ignores the knife-marks all over his arms, he cannot look away.

The child is strikingly beautiful. So delicate. Barely adolescent. High-born at that, not the grubby, half-starved street children he buys to do what he desires.

"Go on, you want to," Mrs Easton urges him in a persuasive voice that is very different from her usual coldness.

Of course he does not like knowing that he will have an audience as he trifles with the child. And with the boy strung up like that, Langton is not likely to do _everything_ that he really wants to do – which Mrs Easton suspects runs more along the lines of thrusting his dick into that little bottom or that sulky little mouth. She wouldn't mind, but she doesn't intend to give him that much time to play, for she wants the boy dead sooner rather than later. Despite all the restrictions, she knows Langton will conclude that it is a small price to pay for such a chance. True enough, he hesitates only a few moments more before approaching the prisoner and stroking his pale body with his fingertips.

Mrs Easton settles back down in her armchair. The boy will remain stoic, of course – he has too much pride to cry in front of his enemies – that much she has learnt. But she has also learnt a little about how to crack the surface of that stoicism, and she sits and observes contentedly the distinct discomfort in his unevenly coloured eyes at Langton's touch. _For the first time, he is squirming inwardly,_ she thinks.

She smiles as a definite shudder runs through him when Langton, with little further preamble, kneels down before him and takes his childlike cock into his mouth.

***

Lizzie opens her eyes for a moment, only to close them again. It is terribly hard to breathe now. The air her lungs crave seems to reach only to the back of her throat, and no further down.

She has no strength left to do anything more.

She sleeps.

***

Sebastian rules out the next place he goes to. It is a working farm, with cows and horses, and people who probably have nothing directly to do with Mrs Easton going about their routine work. Three old bodies are buried very deep in the grazing fields in an unmarked spot, secret victims of a long-ago power struggle within the gang. But that has nothing to do with the present case. If anything else were amiss here, he would sense it. To be safe, he scans the place quickly for evidence of spells and magic that would hide someone living – or just dead – from him. He detects nothing.

He moves on to the next place on his list, a row of filthy tenements packed with the lowest of the low. It is only morning, but already, harsh voices, the smell of drink, the smell of blood, the staleness of ill-health, the wailing of infants, and the shrieks of unwashed children fill the place. He listens, looks, smells and extends his devil's senses to each corner of the property. Chaos can hide much. But Elizabeth is not among the things hidden here.

He has four more places to cover. The next location he intends to go to is a large house out in the countryside, which seems like the next-best place to search. But as he sprints away, something as fast as himself emerges and keeps pace with him. At once, he stops along the unpaved road and eyes the other individual.

"You should go to the Westwood farm just outside London," the person says to him.

Sebastian does not answer at once, but scrutinises the being before him. He is tall, with hair of a very dark golden-brown, and oddly passive hazel eyes. He finds the creature strange, because he is a devil like himself – he can easily tell that much – and devils are vicious things even when they hide their nature beneath a veneer of sweetness. This individual's mildness, however, is no veneer but an affliction that has overtaken his entire self. He does not understand his condition, but before he can assess him more thoroughly, he speaks again:

"You may find what you are looking for at that farm, rather than the country house."

"How do you know, and why are you helping me?" Sebastian asks.

"I have been watching your enemies while you have been watching your master. I am doing this under orders from my own master."

"What is wrong with you?" Sebastian asks sharply, for something _is_ wrong with this devil.

But the other only says: "I have delivered my message. I must return to my master now."

"Are you permitted to tell me your name?" Sebastian inquires.

"My master calls me Carsten."

With that, he leaves in a direction that takes him away from the place he is pointing Sebastian to. Sebastian hesitates for a second. The house, or the farm first? To follow his list or take the other devil's hint?

That second of internal debate over, he speeds towards the farm.

***

Ciel refuses to make a sound. He will not speak a word. He will not squirm, or kick out uselessly against the man – his feet are lashed at the ankles, anyway, the rope secured to a ring set in the floor.

But inside him, every sense and every nerve recoils from this nightmare. He does not want to inhabit this body that is feeling the most disgusting sensations. He tries to shut it out, but it is piercing him in a way that the knife and switch could not, hurting him the way the beating failed to.

The man's fingers are digging hard into his buttocks, groping and kneading him painfully, as his rough mouth sucks and pulls at his cock, and once even enclosed his balls entirely. All the time, Mrs Easton watches, coolly. He blanks his eyes and stares at her, but he knows she can tell that this is different from before. It _hurts_ him.

That long month, when he was held prisoner, chained and slashed with knives, some of his abusers touched him all over, and others leered at him, but nothing quite like this happened.

He hates the skin-crawling ugliness of this, hates the back-and-forthing of the man's head, the repetitive in-and-out motion of it all. Suddenly, the man pulls back a little, his tongue probes and circles the head of his cock, then his lips wrap tightly around him again and glide down hard.

Ciel trembles with fury and disgust both at the man and at himself, for an atavistic part of his body is responding to the act with something other than revulsion. That purely physical instinct is demanding a budding interest in what is going on despite his mind and heart desperately commanding his whole being to offer no reaction whatsoever to anything that happens to him.

Mrs Easton notices the trembling, and smiles.

***

Sebastian reaches the deserted farm the other devil pointed him towards. The moment he scans the place, he knows he has made the right decision. For he can tell that a spell has been worked here – a cheap spell by a practitioner of magic, certainly, but effective nonetheless for concealing one small human.

In the middle of an empty paddock is a spot of very freshly turned earth. The spell is disguising the physical appearance of the disturbed ground, but his eyes can make out the fact of that disguise being attempted.

At once, Sebastian dives towards that spot of ground, pulls off his gloves, and thrusts his arm deep into the soil. Grass and tightly-packed earth part under the blow from his demonic hand, which quickly makes contact with what feels like a crate, its top buried a good three feet under the surface. Elizabeth's scent finally breaks through the barrier of the spell to him. Sebastian digs furiously with his hands and exposes the crate enough to rip its lid off without letting too much soil fall into the cavity.

She lies curled up at the bottom of the container, very pale, a faint bluish tinge about her lips. Clearly, Sophia Easton never intended to return her alive to her family.

"Lady Elizabeth!" he calls as he scoops her out of the crate and lays her on the ground. She is barely breathing.

Gunshots ring out, and bullets hit Sebastian squarely in the back and head. Shielding Elizabeth with his body, he turns to face the aggressors, spits the bullets out of his mouth, and fires them right back out of his hand. The men – two of those whose lives he had previously spared – drop to the ground, dead.

He turns to the business of reviving the little girl. Fortunately, she has not completely stopped breathing. All he needs is to apply gentle pressure twice to the spot directly under her ribcage to encourage her to draw deeper breaths of the fresh air around her.

"Lady Elizabeth?" he speaks again.

Her eyelids flutter a little, although they do not fully open.

"Open your eyes just a crack," he says, as he bends over her and holds his hand two inches above her face to keep her eyes shaded from the daylight.

She recognises his voice, for despite her bright green eyes opening only a slit, and with his hand shielding her face, she whispers: "Sebastian?"

"Good. You are awake. Now listen to me, my lady. You are safe now. I shall take you to your mother immediately, but I must cover your eyes so that you will not be frightened by what we must go through to get you to Lady Francis. Also, you have been in complete darkness for some time, and I do not want your eyes to be damaged by the light."

She nods, saying in a small voice: "I can accept a little more darkness for a while."

"You are very brave, my lady," the butler says, knowing he must be gentle with her though every part of him is straining to go to his master at once.

He pulls his gloves on before wrapping a large handkerchief around her eyes and securing it in a knot behind her head. He lifts her into his arms – she is as delicate as Ciel – and speeds through the quiet country roads and empty lanes he took to get here. He passes very few people, moving so fast that most of them do not really see him; those who do cannot tell what has dashed past them like a streak of black wind.

In moments, he reaches the manor and strides past Baldroy and Finnian into the morning room, to the cries and exclamations of Mey-Rin and Lady Francis. Elizabeth starts to sob when she hears her mother's voice.

"Lady Francis," Sebastian says quickly. "I had to cover the Lady Elizabeth's eyes because she had been locked in darkness for some time – sudden bright sunlight will hurt her vision – so please close the curtains before you remove the handkerchief."

Mey-Rin rushes to draw the curtains, dimming the room enough for Lady Francis to slip the handkerchief off her daughter's face.

"Oh, Elizabeth!" she cries, holding the girl tightly. She does not often hug her children, but she now feels that she will never dare let this child go again.

"Mother!" the girl says, between sobs, clinging to her. "I was so afraid... I couldn't breathe... but Sebastian found me."

"Thank you," Aunt Francis' lips form the words as she looks up at the butler. No sounds come from her throat, which has tightened with emotion and tears.

"I must go my young master now, before it is too late," the butler says, disappearing from the house as he did before.

She knows that something is very unusual about him, but Lady Francis does not care, for he has returned her daughter to her alive and well, and she can bend all her hopes and prayers towards the safety of her nephew, Ciel.

***

"Had enough fun, Langton?" Mrs Easton asks, getting up from her armchair.

The man has almost forgotten her presence, so wrapped up is he in molesting the child. He starts and turns to her with some embarrassment, wiping the saliva off his mouth with his sleeve as he stands up. He says nothing, but steps aside to give her access to the boy, who is still determinedly presenting an emotionless facade, although it seems a thinner, more fragile veneer now.

"If you've had enough, it's time to end this game," she states. "Have Thomas prepare the cage as I instructed him earlier."

"Yes, Ma'am," Langton mumbles before leaving the room, giving the delicious child one last glance, knowing he will not see him alive again.

***

His master has not summoned him – he certainly will not call Sebastian to his side when he does not know if Elizabeth is safe. But even without being summoned, he can find him wherever he is.

That mark in his eye means that he can never escape him, even if he tries.

***

"Not long after you die, I am very likely to die myself, if my attempts to break my sons out of the Tower fail," Mrs Easton says to Ciel. "But to give myself a chance of success, I must have you dead, so that you will not interfere with my plans. And if I fail, then it means that both our bloodlines end – so it is fair, what I am doing to you. If I succeed, and leave with my sons for places where England cannot touch us, then I shall have survived while taking a thorough revenge on the one who turned the Prince of Wales against my family."

Ciel does not answer her, but she has seen enough telltale signs of his internal distress at Langton's acts to be content with his silence. She calls for two other men. They cut the ropes suspending him from the beam and securing his feet to the floor, and take him downstairs. His wrists remain tied together; his ankles also.

Near the stalled mill wheel, an iron-barred cage waits for him. Already shaken by Langton's abuse, he begins to struggle against his captors for the first time, because that contraption is like the blood-filled cage from his dreams; like the cage he was held in during his month-long nightmare. It frightens him in a visceral way.

It is useless. He is put into the enclosure. The cage is positioned over the portion of the river that still flows freely, but secured to the wheel by a long rope so that the current will not sweep it away. It is then half-lowered into the water. He grips a bar weakly with his bound, aching hands to stay upright, and the sight of his fingers clinging feebly to the iron seems to please Mrs Easton.

The rope is let out. The cage sinks a little more, until the water is up to his neck. Sophia Easton's last words to him emerge in a strangely detached way, as if she is no longer interested in what is going on, but merely wishes to mock him one last time: "The magical practitioners I hired failed to help me penetrate the defences of your manor. But they did tell me that it would be most fitting if I were to end your life by drowning, in a cage. It seems you do not like cages?"

She does not wait to see if he will answer. She gestures casually, almost gracefully, with her left hand to her men, who release more of the rope until the cage drops below the surface, fully submerging Ciel in the cold waters of the rushing river.


	13. Arms

Terror is all that Ciel feels as the water closes over his head, and the river swallows him whole. The airless element enveloping him entirely is so cold that he has to consciously stop himself from gasping in a reflex action as he is forced down to the bottom by the sinking cage. He struggles briefly in a panic, but once the cage hits the river bed, he quickly becomes calm as he accepts the fact that he is doomed to die.

His lungs have never been strong, or capacious; they cannot hold much air. He ought to end it quickly by allowing the water to rush into his body through his nose and mouth, instead of fighting to keep it out. Still, a part of him refuses to yield to death so easily, after having been given a second chance at life by the devil he made a contract with.

Even if he cannot speak underwater, he only needs to summon Sebastian in his mind, and he will come. But he refuses to do that, for Lizzie may not yet be safe. If she is close to death herself, then calling Sebastian will be tantamount to murdering her, because the devil will drop everything – including Elizabeth – to fly to him.

Though mere seconds have passed since his last gulp of air, his lungs are aching. He forces his eyelids open. The cold stings his eyes. However, the water runs clear, and he is able to look up through the bars of the cage, tilting to one side on the river bed. He gazes calmly up through the surface of the water, at the blue sky above.

All of a sudden, Sebastian is there on the bank of the river, looking down at him. The devil seems to smile, although it may be no more than a ripple on the water surface twisting Ciel's view of his lips. Then he vanishes.

The scenes from Ciel's dream hit him with full force, and his calmness scatters as despair takes over. As the water floods his nose and mouth, everything goes black from the pain – a blow like someone kicking him in the chest – and his last thought is that he has been tricked one final time, in the cruellest way, by the devil who had promised that he was owned by him.

***

Sebastian reaches his master moments after leaving the Phantomhive manor. The instant he lands on the bank of the river into which Sophia Easton's cronies have dropped a cage with Ciel in it, he is fired upon by some twenty men. Bullets tear through his immortal flesh and rip holes in his clothes.

The boy is almost out of breath. But he will have to wait one second more, while his butler disarms and binds every one of those thugs so that no bullets will ricochet into him once he pulls him from the water.

Swiftly, Sebastian disgorges the bullets into his hands and fires back at the men, hitting every one of them, but deliberately missing Mrs Easton – he will leave her to his master. He sweeps through their ranks like lightning, relieving them all of their weapons and binding them with the long tail-end of the great coil of rope that holds the cage. The lady he is pleased to knock senseless with the hard edge of his hand.

With not a moment more to waste, he tears off his coat, plunges into the frigid water, breaks the cage open and lifts his little master out of the river only to find that the child has stopped breathing. His arms and back are also scored with numerous knife cuts – but the latter wounds are not crucial now. What is pressing is the need to revive him at once.

"Young Master!" Sebastian calls, even as he thinks: _Foolish child!_ _All you had to do was to hold your breath for one more second!_

The boy is naked as the day he was born. An apt state for him to be in, for Sebastian knows he has to act as quickly as a midwife does when the baby she has pulled from a womb fails to draw breath. He holds Ciel upside down over his lap. No water emerges. He smacks him smartly on the back – once, twice. Some water leaves his nose and mouth. Still, he does not breathe, and his heartbeat is slowing dramatically. Sebastian at once turns him over, lays him on his back on the coat he pulled off just before leaping into the river, and presses his mouth to his, forcing air into his body while his left hand rests on his narrow chest, monitoring the slow pulsing of his heart, urging his organs to return life to his body.

Steadily, he drives lungfuls of air into the boy, compelling his air passages to reopen. He is a devil, and can tell better than anyone else here that the child's soul has not separated from his body. There is life in him yet. Again, and again, and once again, he breathes into his master, and breathes for him. At last, Ciel splutters and coughs violently, expelling the remaining drops of river water. Sebastian holds him as the spasms rack his thin body, and holds him tighter as he gasps and wheezes, struggling against the pain, against the one trying to help him.

"Young Master, be calm. Steady your breathing. The pain will pass," the butler says, keeping his arms about him, his mouth still filled with the sweetness of the boy's lips and breath. Many feet behind them, the men who are still alive struggle and swear while their lady, bound along with them, remains unconscious. Sebastian ignores them, his body a barrier keeping him and his master alone in their own space.

"Se...bastian...?" the child's hoarse voice comes between his ragged gasps.

"You are safe now," Sebastian answers, pulling back a little so that the boy can see his face.

"Lizzie...?" he rasps.

"Lady Elizabeth is alive and well," he assures him, as he slashes through the rope binding his wrists and ankles. "She is safe with Lady Francis."

"Why did you save me?" is Ciel's next question. His eyes are wide with bewilderment, and not a little suspicion, even as he shakes violently from the cold.

Sebastian gazes back at him curiously. "Why would I _not_ save you, my lord?"

"You smiled at me and went away."

"Young Master," Sebastian says soberly. "I had to leave you for a second to prevent those creatures from shooting you once I pulled you from the water. I was able to shield Lady Elizabeth from two guns with my body, but I preferred not to chance your being shot when we were surrounded by twenty armed men. I believed you could and would hold your breath for just that second longer. And I did _not_ smile at your predicament."

"You're smiling _now_ ," the earl remarks, still suspiciously, his teeth chattering.

"Because you are no longer in danger," the butler replies.

Sebastian shifts his arms to pick Ciel up so that he can take him into the mill house, dry him quickly, and wrap him up warmly before he dies of exposure. But as his hands brush the boy's hips, the earl unexpectedly tenses and tries to push him away with his aching, mutilated arms.

"Young Master...?" the butler asks, concerned that some other, more serious injuries besides the knife wounds and the welts are hurting the child, and that he may have failed after all to save him.

But there is no other grievous physical wound. The child is shrinking from his touch as never before, trying to hide his nakedness as he never has from him. Sebastian sharpens his senses, seeking an answer to what has happened besides the cutting and beating. The river has washed a great deal of evidence away, but his devil's senses are acute, and he finds it soon enough – a scent of a male's saliva, his tongue and mouth, all over the child's private parts. A swift glance downwards picks out some tooth abrasions on the boy. Whoever did this to him did not care enough to keep his teeth covered with his lips at all times.

A cold, biting sensation of wrath spirals through his demonic being. He desires little more now than to whip around and rend limb from limb the worthless human who has dared to so touch his master. Even Agni's honourable handling of the child was almost unacceptable to him; what more this violation?

But his first priority is to assuage the boy's fears, so he pushes his wrath aside and wraps his coat around Ciel, covering his body from his head almost to his toes. There is gunpowder on the exterior of the coat, but that cannot be helped now, and Sebastian hopes the thickness of the wool and its silk lining will keep the substance from touching his master's wounds. The collar drapes like a cloak's hood over the earl's head, allowing him to shield his face from everything here if that is what he wants to do.

"Young Master," he speaks as gently as he did to Elizabeth. "I would not harm you for the world – not for all the world."

He fixes his garnet eyes on Ciel's sapphire-and-violet orbs without blinking or looking away, until the message sinks in. When at last it registers, the boy visibly relaxes. He allows him now to lift him into his arms, without resistance. The big black coat keeps him well-wrapped and warm despite the many bullet holes in it.

"Nothing and no one can touch you now if you do not wish it," Sebastian says to him as he walks back towards the pile of humans composed of Mrs Easton and her men. "You only need to say the word, and I shall kill those who remain alive."

A tremor runs through the boy's body, separate from the cold-induced shivering. The butler clasps him even more tightly as for the first time he feels his master willingly slipping his arms around his neck.

"Only say the word, and they will die," Sebastian whispers, as the small arms tighten about him.

"All except Mrs Easton," the child whispers back against the base of his ear.

"Yes, I have kept her alive especially for you. And if you point out the one who hurt you the most, I shall tear his tongue out of his mouth before I end his life."

"No, I don't want to look at him again." The boy is pressing his face into the side of his neck, the collar-hood concealing the rest of his head.

"As you wish, Young Master. Give me your order."

"Kill all the men," he murmurs against the devil's skin.

"Yes, my lord," Sebastian replies, scanning the pile for the ones still breathing. Keeping his master safe in the embrace of his left arm, he picks up a rusty blade lying on the ground with his right hand and slits the throats of those who survived the bullets, one by one, moving as smoothly as running water around the group. He allows the blood to spurt over Mrs Easton, who has still not regained her senses.

One man's scent stands out for him, for it corresponds to that which he detected on that part of the child nobody should have touched without permission. The man tries to scream and beg as the devil closes in on him. But Sebastian reaches into his mouth and tears his tongue out, then clamps his hand over his mouth to stop all sounds of agony, letting him writhe in terror for a good minute or so before slashing his neck so deeply that his head lolls and hangs off his shoulders by a flap of skin. Another man has many drops of the boy's blood on him – he must have been the one who inflicted the knife wounds. Sebastian gags him with a filthy rag lying in the soil, then steps on and crushes both his hands before drawing the knife across his throat.

Holding Ciel tightly, and ensuring that the boy's face is still buried in his neck, the butler unties the rope holding the pile of bodies and one unconscious woman together, and scatters the corpses around the river bank. He sweeps up all their weapons – the guns he had cast aside earlier, the knife he used, and drops them amidst the bodies.

"There now, Young Master – it looks almost as if they shot and slashed one another – except the woman. What would you have me do with her?"

"Leave her to the police."

"Oh?" Sebastian asks, genuinely surprised. "Do you not want me to torture her for days, until she pleads for permission to die? I could do many things to her, and no one would ever find her again, not one piece of her."

The boy stirs in his arms, and Sebastian angles his body so that Ciel will not see any of the bodies when he lifts his head – especially not the one with the torn-out tongue.

A deep-blue eye peers up at him from under the curve of the makeshift hood as the earl tells him: "No, I don't want her dead, because that is what _she_ wants if she fails to carry out her plan. So I want you to tie her to the mill wheel and tell Commissioner Randall that Mrs Easton's men, who abducted the Lady Elizabeth Midford, have turned against and killed one another, but Mrs Easton remains alive to be arrested. Let her rot in prison, knowing she has failed."

"Are you certain?"

"Yes."

"Then I shall do as you say, Young Master. Do you wish to watch while I tie her to the wheel?"

"No. I never want to look at her again."

"May I at least set the wheel in motion?"

He hopes the proposal will bring a spark back into the boy's eyes, but Ciel only says uninterestedly: "I'll leave that to your judgement."

So he carries his master into the mill house and finds him a chair to sit on. He would like to clean his wounds, but he distrusts the cleanness of the water here – the river itself may have done enough unseen damage as it is. His handkerchief is at the manor, still lying on the floor where Lady Francis dropped it. Fortunately, there is a spare handkerchief inside one of the coat pockets. He uses that the best he can to clean and dry his master's wounds.

He wraps him up again, and scans the area to make certain that he has overlooked no one who might harm him. He then goes back outside alone and proceeds to bind Sophia Easton by her wrists and ankles to the outer circumference of the waterwheel, over the blades. He ties her tightly, unheeding of whether the ropes will damage her limbs or not. He will spare her no such consideration, when it is plain how much harm she has caused his master. Indeed, he wishes that he had been given the order to peel her skin off her bones an inch at a time. But alas, he must content himself with smaller gestures.

She is beginning to stir, so he stands on the bank and waits till she opens her eyes. Then he opens the sluice gates, and the wheel slowly creaks and begins to turn after years of not moving in the water. Sebastian's devilish eyes gleam as the woman begins to gulp air when she realises that her feet are sinking into the river, soon followed by the rest of her.

This wheel is constructed such that at no point of its rotation do its blades come too close to a wall or any other solid structure, so Mrs Easton will not be crushed as it turns in its old circle. It moves rather slowly on its first round, not having gained momentum, and she spends a good half-minute underwater before emerging feet-first on the other side. She is now upside-down, and her dress has scooped up a large amount of water. The outermost silk of her skirt falls down over her face while exposing her lawn underskirts, stockings, part of her bustle, and her drawers. Sebastian smiles sadistically as she splutters against the soaked green fabric, shaking her head from side to side to get it off her face. The fabric slides away from her mouth only after the wheel turns her upright again, and she has a few seconds to take air into her lungs before she is pulled under the water once more.

The young master is not entirely right about her wanting to die if her plans failed, muses Sebastian. She seems to be holding on to life the best she can – or perhaps she thinks the fight is not over yet. Her light-coloured eyes flash murderous looks his way even as she snatches air into her lungs; if her power were equal to her will, she would surely destroy him.

He puts her through three more rotations of the wheel before closing the sluice gates, timing it so the wheel comes to rest while she is upside-down. Let the police find her that way, exposing her undergarments to the world, the devil thinks.

Before he leaves the river, he springs onto the wheel and strikes her on the temple with the edge of his hand to render her unconscious once more, not caring if she sustains permanent harm from the blow. He hopes that she will truly feel the pain of it when she awakes. It would please him to do more, but he has already exceeded the authority given by his young master, so he leaves it at that.

Done with the woman, he returns to the mill house.

"Did you kill her?" the boy asks indifferently. He is calmer, and no longer shivering.

"No, my lord. She is alive, as you ordered. You may see for yourself."

"I don't enjoy staring at people who have been robbed of their dignity, unlike you."

"I did what I did because she nearly damaged my master beyond recovery."

Ciel seems to consider giving a reply to that before dismissing the thought and saying instead: "My clothes and ring are in the upper room. Fetch them."

Sebastian scans the place once more to make certain that no one remains alive or mobile to harm the boy. He enters the uppermost room of the mill house to retrieve the clothes, shoes and jewellery stripped from Ciel's body. He spends only a second there, but does not miss the blade and switch smeared with his master's blood, or any of the blood and sweat spilt on the uneven floorboards. It is all evident to his acute senses despite what appears to have been a crude attempt to wash them away with water. Neither does he miss the scent of the dead man's arousal, the boy's revulsion, and Sophia Easton's pleasure.

Having taken in the details of that scene, he descends the stairs, bends down before his master and draws back the hood to look properly into his face, which is still red from the beating Mrs Easton gave him. Now that they have a quiet moment, Sebastian wants to chide the boy for ordering him to save his cousin before himself, but the awareness of what he has been through makes him hold his tongue.

"Would you like to be dressed in your own clothes before we leave this place?" is all the butler chooses to ask at this time.

Ciel nods.

Sebastian carefully dresses him and finishes up with the shoes, ring, and eye-patch.

"Shall we leave?"

"Not yet. There's a working telephone line behind you – I saw one of the men using it earlier as they were taking me upstairs. Ring the Commissioner and tell him to send his people out here."

Lord Randall rants and fires a hundred questions at Sebastian over the telephone. But as the abduction of Elizabeth, daughter of the Marquess of Midford, has been reported to the police, he knows this could be another feather in the Yard's cap. So he shuts up after five minutes and agrees to clean up the mess at the mill.

That done, Sebastian prepares to remove his master from this unwholesome place.

"The Marchioness' carriage is not here," he observes.

"No. They ditched Aunt Francis' carriage and horses a mile from the manor and changed to another."

"That other conveyance remains here. Would you like to take it?" Sebastian asks. "This mill is not far from the manor."

"I don't want to touch anything of Sophia Easton's."

"Of course. May I bear you back to the manor, then?"

"You may."

To keep Ciel as warm as possible even though he is already fully clothed, Sebastian rewraps his hole-ridden coat over and around him, picks him up, and sprints off the land around the mill before slowing to a walk in the forest.

"We are off those grounds now, and won't meet Lord Randall's people. Let us travel more slowly for a while, shall we?" he asks. "It will give my clothes time to dry."

Ciel assents with a nod, and reclines his sore cheek against Sebastian's shoulder before murmuring: "Did she gasp for breath?"

"Oh yes, several times."

"Good." A little spirit in his voice now.

"I would have liked to have hurt her more – perhaps another time?"

"Perhaps." A pause, followed by another question: "You really didn't leave me to die in the river, did you?"

"No, my lord. I truly believed you had breath enough to last you till I had disarmed the men."

"And you tore out that man's tongue."

"I did not think you saw that, or I would have covered your eyes before doing it."

"I didn't see. I knew you did, because you sounded like you wanted to when you suggested it earlier."

"Did I sound that way?" Sebastian asks seriously.

"Yes."

"Then I must have really wanted to," Sebastian whispers.

Ciel slips his arms around his butler again, presses his face to his neck, and whispers back against the devil's cool flesh: "I'm glad you wanted to."

Sebastian smiles, for the words uttered against his skin feel like soft kisses from the lips of Ciel Phantomhive, planted along with his sweet, warm breath on his butler's throat.

***

Before entering the manor, Ciel orders Sebastian to set him down. He does not want the others reacting hysterically to his being carried, which will be a dead giveaway to them that he has been seriously hurt. He also tells him to put the bullet-ridden coat back on himself, so its blackness will hide the numerous, more obvious, holes peppering the butler's waistcoat and shirt. Despite those precautions, they are still mobbed. The servants flock about the earl, all talking at once, and Sebastian has to tell them to give the master space.

Aunt Francis and Elizabeth are upstairs in one of the guest bedrooms, where the trusted, long-time physician to the Midford family is almost done with his medical examination of the girl. Doctor Marshall is just remarking to the girl and her mother how fortunate it is that her stays were not tightly laced, or she might have died before help came. But Lizzie barely hears him, for the second the commotion downstairs reaches her ears, she leaps up from the bed against her mother's admonishments, and flies into the foyer to throw her arms around her cousin.

"CIEL!" she cries, bursting into fresh tears.

The earl does not normally like such demonstrations of affection, but he welcomes it today despite his wounds hurting all over again at Lizzie's tight embrace, so relieved is he to see with his own eyes that the girl is unharmed.

"I only thought of myself when I was trapped in that box," she sobs on his shoulder. "But when Mother confessed that you had gone away alone with those wicked people to try and save me, I wished I had died instead!"

"Don't say such foolish things, Lizzie," he chides her. "No one is dead."

 _Except for more than twenty of Mrs Easton's men, but you are never to know of that,_ the boy thinks.

"Oh, Ciel! Your face!" she exclaims when she draws back and sees the welts on his cheeks.

By this time, Aunt Francis has made her way down with the physician. She immediately goes up to Ciel and puts her arms around both him and her daughter.

"I do not think I would ever forgive myself for so foolishly being taken in by Sophia Easton if you had not come back, Ciel," she whispers to him.

"Everything is fine, Aunt Francis," he replies, glad for the long sleeves and high collar of his shirt, and his black coat, which conceal the cuts on his arms and back.

"Your face... someone has struck you," Lady Francis says, when she looks closely at him. The touch of her hand is so different from Mrs Easton's – there is no malice in it, only love – but Ciel puts his hand over hers and gently moves her fingers away from his face.

"I'm perfectly well. This is nothing," he states to both mother and daughter. "Lizzie, tell me if those men hurt you in any way."

"They locked me in a dark box. I couldn't breathe after a while, and I think I slept. But Sebastian found me. That's all... oh, and I had a splinter in my thumb, but Doctor Marshall has removed it."

Ciel, seeing through his cousin's words to the truth of how close she came to dying, bows his head and indulges her by letting her keep her arms about him a little longer.

"Doctor Marshall," Aunt Francis turns to the physician. "Would you please examine my nephew to ensure that he is not badly injured?"

"Certainly, Lady Midford," the physician says.

But the earl steps back from both the doctor and Elizabeth, and puts a hand up. "Thank you. I am perfectly well. A medical examination is unnecessary."

"Ciel, this once..." Aunt Francis pleads.

"I thank you, but I must decline. I do wish, however, to ask Doctor Marshall about my cousin's present health."

"My examination of the Lady Elizabeth has revealed little more than distress and shock," the doctor replies. "She is breathing well. Her lungs do not appear to have been damaged by being shut in a place with little air, as she reports that she was."

"That is good to know. What about the coachman and Lady Elizabeth's maid?"

"I telephoned the manor a few minutes ago," Aunt Francis says. "Doctor Marshall's assistant, who remains with them, informed me that they were both awake. They are in pain, but it appears that they will live if they do not take a turn for the worse in the next day or two. I ought likewise to have telephoned you earlier, when Mrs Easton first came running to our house. If I had stayed calm, I would have rung you first. Instead, I impulsively heeded her recommendation that we drive here and look for Elizabeth along the way. Because of that, I brought that monster into your manor."

"She would have come here with or without you," Ciel says. "Her arrival in your carriage only smoothed her entry, and gave her the pleasure of seeing your distress."

"Nonetheless, I was a fool."

"No – Elizabeth is safe and her health unharmed, and the servants will recover. I am home also. Therefore, all is well. The police have been told where Mrs Easton's gang is. They will see to it that those people never trouble you again. Lizzie, you must rest at home after what you went through. I shall have Baldroy and Mey-Rin drive you and Aunt Francis to your manor and keep you safe all the way there."

Lizzie starts to object, but her mother puts a hand on her shoulder and tells her: "Elizabeth, your cousin is right. You must rest at home, and we must see Jones and Paula. Ciel himself is badly in need of a long sleep, I think. But before we leave, I insist that my nephew take a jar of Doctor Marshall's ointment, to apply to those scratches on his face. Doctor Marshall, please add the charges to the Midford account."

It would be ungracious of Ciel to reject this least little gesture from his aunt, so he accepts, and Sebastian receives a jar from the doctor, which he sets on the side table.

"Thank you, Aunt Francis," Ciel says. "Sebastian, see Lady Francis and Elizabeth to my carriage, and Doctor Marshall to his gig."

Lizzie gives Ciel one more tearful embrace before Sebastian walks her and her mother to the Phantomhive carriage, which is ready and waiting because Baldroy had wished to be prepared for all eventualities. The chef takes the reins, Mey-Rin sits inside the carriage with one revolver and one rifle strapped under her skirts, and they roll away, the doctor's gig travelling close behind.

Sebastian returns to the foyer to find Ciel already climbing the stairs on his own. He is refusing help from Finnian and Tanaka, who hover helplessly. The boy has obviously spent the past fifteen minutes presenting a strong facade to his relatives and the physician. Now that they have left, all his strength is sapped, and he is taking the stairs stiffly, on unsteady legs. Doggedly resisting the pain, he struggles on obstinately until Sebastian strides past Finnian and Tanaka, moves up behind Ciel, bends down and puts his arms around his waist, stopping him from climbing any further.

"Young Master, please allow me," he says into the child's ear.

Ciel does not answer, but neither does he strain and struggle against being held back.

"Please turn around so that I may lift you without further hurting the places where your skin is broken – the cuts must be smarting," Sebastian continues.

Ciel remains unmoving on the stairs for a few more seconds, and Sebastian is uncertain if he is thinking about it, or too tired to react. But eventually, the boy turns around in silence within the secure circle of his butler's arms.

Without another word, Sebastian lifts him up, one arm under his bottom and another gently holding the small of his back, and carries him into his bedroom.


	14. Inflammation

Sebastian pushes the bedroom door shut with his foot and carries Ciel to the bed, where he seats him on the edge of the mattress.

"Young Master, I must examine your injuries," he tells him, to which Ciel only nods tiredly.

Sebastian removes all the earl's upper clothing, easing the shirt fabric over the mutilated arms to avoid chafing the cuts. Some of the cuts have wept into the white shirt, staining the fabric. Seeing the wounds again makes the butler's anger simmer, though he does not let it show. The child is his to protect, yet humans with no right to touch the boy have disfigured his flesh.

He counts twenty-one cuts on his left arm, and twenty-three on the right, each about two inches long. They are very shallow, but were inflicted slowly and painfully. On Ciel's back are seventeen switch marks and twelve passes of the knife between his shoulder blades. Doubtless there would have been more had there not been some interruption – Mrs Easton must have stopped the cutting to hit him, or have her man toy with him. The edges of each cut are swelling, and infection is Sebastian's greatest concern. The blade and switch may not have been clean; the river water too might have introduced disease to the open wounds, or into the boy's lungs.

Soft sounds outside the door indicate that Finnian and Tanaka have brought up the first of the six buckets of water he requested earlier. He ignores the muted noises as he dabs at the weeping cuts with clean linen. He can only wait to see if they become infected, for humans are odd creatures – their ailments often begin and progress unpredictably.

The butler spends a good while soothing the welts on Ciel's face with cool lavender water, pressing the linen gently to his flesh until the redness lessens. He is moving on to inspect his scalp for concealed bumps and cuts when a knock sounds at the door. He drapes a light dressing gown over Ciel and loosely knots it before admitting Tanaka and Finnian, who have by now boiled and brought up the rest of the water, along with Doctor Marshall's ointment. They carry the buckets into the bathroom in two trips, and leave quietly after casting worried glances at the earl, who does not look at them.

Sebastian locks the bedroom door before filling the tub from the two lots of freshly boiled water, and four lots of water that had been boiled, then cooled, earlier today. In the latest rebuilding of the manor, he had obtained Ciel's consent to put in modern piping. This now allows the household to get cold water out of taps carried by pipes from the stream running along the border of Phantomhive lands, collected in a tank and passed through a filter of pebbles and fine sand, then pumped up the pipes in the walls. Sebastian intends to put in a heated tank soon, but for now, the hot water must still be boiled in the kitchen and mixed with the cold.

With his master's flesh broken in so many places, however, he will not risk the use of the piped water. He wants only that which has been boiled before. He mixes the hot and cool water to his satisfaction, then leads Ciel into the bathroom and slips off his dressing gown.

"Young Master, the water is not too hot, because I do not want it to damage your skin further. But it is warm enough to make your wounds sting. Can you bear it? It will help to clean the cuts on your body."

Ciel nods wordlessly.

Sebastian kneels before him and unbuttons his shorts and drawers. He proceeds with caution, touching his skin as little as possible, not knowing how the child will respond to contact with his bare flesh after the events at the mill. But Ciel lets himself be fully undressed and helped into the bath without any unusual reaction.

"It is usually best not to soak open wounds," he explains. "But the river and the instruments that inflicted those wounds may have been unclean. I want to wash out whatever we can before I put any bandages on you."

Ciel grips the porcelain rim of the bath as he eases himself into the water. The heat, though mild, sets his wounds on fire. The boy grits his teeth and hisses as he submerges each cut, completing the painful process by forcing his arms and shoulders under, hunching so the raw marks on his back will not touch the porcelain.

His butler chooses a very mild soap and steeps a linen bag of dried lavender in the tub. The lavender will help calm Ciel, and impart its gentle cleansing properties to the water. With a wet towel, he wipes the boy's hair to sponge away contamination from the river. At the same time, he resumes his inspection of his scalp for hidden injuries.

"Do keep your head above the bathwater, Young Master," he says as he strokes the dark hair with the face towel. "Let the lavender water on your face do its work. I will clean your hair this way."

Ciel has been so quiet since Lady Francis and Elizabeth left that he does not expect him to speak now. But he does, muttering: "That is an unnecessary reminder. My head's been under water long enough today to last me a lifetime."

"It has," the butler says. "Why did you try to make it your grave?"

"I thought you weren't coming back," he answers frankly.

"If I wanted you dead, I would kill you myself, not have someone else kill you for me. I shall be honest with you now that you are calmer: I always derive a thrill of pleasure from seeing a human in pain. You did look beautiful in that cage for a moment, suffering under the flowing water. But the moment passed, and I truly was as appalled as your cousin or aunt would have been when I pulled you from the river and found that you were not breathing."

"You're a sick bastard," Ciel mutters sourly.

"Guilty as charged."

"Though I believe you."

"You know I don't lie."

"Except by omission, sometimes."

"Well, yes, sometimes. I am what I am."

This exchange initially gives Sebastian reason to believe that Ciel is making a swift recovery from the torture. But the silence that follows hints that not all is well. The child of before would have gone on to ask, ironically or naively, how his mouth tasted as he was resuscitating him, thinking only of himself as devil food. Now he keeps quiet, because he has learnt things that Sebastian would not have chosen to expose him to until he was older.

It gets worse when the butler is patting him dry with a large towel – he flinches when the towel touches the place between his legs. Sebastian pretends not to notice, ushering him into the bedroom before unwrapping him so that he can start to dress his wounds properly.

Ciel himself, however, is the one who brings it up. "Is the smell of him gone from me... there?" he asks in an uncharacteristically subdued voice. "If it isn't, I want to sit in the bath longer."

"Not a trace of that worthless creature remains on you," Sebastian assures him.

"You are certain? Because it... hurts..." the boy mumbles.

"Young Master?" the butler seeks clarification, for the tooth abrasions on him are very minor, and unlikely to be causing more discomfort than the cuts and switch marks, unless... "Did he _bite_ you?"

"I think so. Once..." He trails off, not knowing what to say.

"Where exactly?"

"Behind... near the..." Ciel starts to say, awkwardly, before it dawns on both him and Sebastian that he does not really have the vocabulary to describe where it hurts, at least not without uttering words he considers stupid or vulgar.

"Young Master, please lie down. I will have a look."

Ciel baulks. He appears almost ready to flee. Sebastian has never seen the boy in this state – embarrassed in the extreme, so uncomfortable that he is blushing under the welts and scratches while struggling to remain dignified. The butler doubts that he acted like this when Mrs Easton had him stripped and beaten – he would have been as arrogant as ever despite his nudity. But ironically, he is embarrassed now because on the one hand, he trusts the devil at last; and on the other, those thugs have taught him things he should not yet have learnt.

His quickened heartbeat, flushing cheeks, and eyes darting about in panic as his butler lifts him onto the bed trigger Sebastian's predatory instincts without warning. This is an echo of the night on the island when he denied himself a much-deserved meal because the meal behaved oddly. Now, that same prey is doing everything it ought to have done that evening – behaving exactly as prey should.

Sebastian knows he should shut these devilish instincts down immediately, for indulging them is a risk. But he perversely toys with danger, slackening the leash he keeps his true nature on. _How easy it would be to tear this little body apart now, to possess the boy in more ways than one..._

Every devil in a contract naturally desires to get close to its master. Through dedication of service, physical proximity, sex, or spiritual possession, and eventually destruction and consumption, the demon presses close to its temporary owner. Some even damn the consequences of breaking a contract by prematurely consuming their masters, visiting upon themselves pain, inconvenience and some loss of power after the pleasure, though it is normally survivable.

A Ciel Phantomhive blushing, all but shying away, unclothed, cut up, the scent of blood rising from his arms and back, is a prize any devil would risk shattering a contract to seize. Sebastian hovers over the boy as he lays him down on the bed, all his predatory urges aflame, garnet eyes on the verge of glowing like coals, fangs about to be bared. No one but himself should touch the child intimately, yet someone did this very morning. His beast-like inclination now is to own the boy fully before anyone else can lay their hands on him. He wants to open him up, take him, make him his in ways no one else has, then possess him in the most irrevocable way by killing him and claiming his soul.

It would be so easy...

So very easy...

...except that he has greater self-control than that.

Not to mention that his regaining of the child's trust after much effort makes him worth more than a means to immediate gratification. The thrill of seeing the final horror of betrayal in his eyes would pass all too swiftly, and be far too small a reward when judged against years of potential. Then there is the significant peril of violating this contract which was sealed by his own demonic blood – he would pay a painful price for breaking it. So he arrests his instincts and reels them in before his master notices the unseemly slide of his facade.

"Lie back. I won't harm you," he murmurs throatily into Ciel's ear as he regains power over himself, compelling himself to mean what he has just said, remembering that he promised the boy not an hour ago that he would not hurt him for the world.

The butler is certain that Ciel would have observed the momentary alteration in his demeanour were it not for his own embarrassment. He is as self-conscious as the devil has ever seen him, and nervous, which he rarely is.

Sebastian rolls his shirt sleeves past his elbows so no fabric will chafe Ciel, slips his bare arms under the boy in a way that will not hurt the broken skin, and pulls him down towards the edge of the bed without dragging the torn flesh of his back along the covers. He crouches next to the bed while gently bending both those slender legs at the knees, moving them up and back for an unimpeded view of the area that appears to be giving him discomfort.

Sebastian examines the boy's organ with his bare hands and inspects the scrotum until he finds, at the base of the sac a half-inch from where it joins the flesh before the anal opening, a nasty gash from the offender's teeth – probably his lower front teeth. It is not a long mark, but is deep enough considering how delicate the skin is there. The man may have inflicted it unintentionally in his hurry to remove his mouth from the boy, or to shift his attention from one spot to another.

"Don't move," Sebastian says, leaving Ciel for a moment to get the doctor's ointment from the cabinet where Tanaka left it. He uncaps the jar and sniffs the contents, identifying concentrated essences of herbs with medicinal properties, blended with partially solidified vegetable oils into a balm. Nothing here will harm the boy. It may even help prevent certain infections. However, its infection-fighting qualities could irritate open wounds and affect the way they heal.

He compromises. From the cabinet, he takes out his own concoctions, which he regularly makes and keeps fresh stores of because his master is so prone to abduction and injury. The doctor's ointment is stronger and more balanced than his – unsurprising, for healing human wounds is hardly a devil's speciality. But his are less likely to inflame broken skin, so he takes some of the doctor's ointment and mixes it with one of his bland creams, making it gentler for use.

He returns to the bedside with the blend and crouches between Ciel's legs again. Ciel truly does not know where to look as his butler peers closely at him and applies a tiny amount of the diluted ointment to the wound, rubbing it in carefully without causing further injury to this sensitive part of his anatomy.

"Is there any other discomfort you would like to bring to my attention while I am down here?" he asks pleasantly. He knows full well that the question will make Ciel want to die of mortification, but he cannot resist some mischief after having exercised such commendable self-restraint by not sinking his teeth into the tasty little lap dog before him. Besides, if he can rile the boy enough to rouse his temper, he may steer him out of the depths of his trauma.

"No," Ciel says shortly.

"Are you certain? I see a small wound right here –" Sebastian dabs a spot of ointment on a crescent-shaped puncture mark between the boy's buttocks, close to the anal opening, apparently left by one fingernail of the worthless human who dug too deeply with his hands while holding the child.

Ciel jumps when Sebastian's finger touches him there. But he settles back down again, lets the butler finish the job, and gathers the shreds of his offended dignity the best he can. By the time Sebastian lifts his head from between his master's legs and helps Ciel back into a sitting position, the temporary madness has passed for them both. The boy is no longer behaving like prey, and the butler has imprisoned his fleeting urge to tear open his flesh. Sebastian in fact has to resist the urge to smile when he glances at the child's sulky face, and meets that annoyed glare coming out of that pair of mismatched eyes. Better. Much better.

He dips a different finger into the ointment and begins to smooth the blend gently over every cut and scratch. As he traces each mark, his anger with Mrs Easton rises anew, and he vows to himself that no one will ever harm the boy like this again. He realises as he makes the silent vow that he must protect his master as much from his devil's impulsive urges as from everything else – but that at least falls within his own control.

When all the wounds are covered in a light film of ointment, Sebastian wraps Ciel's arms from wrist to armpit in lengths of soft, clean linen bandages. To cover the cuts between his shoulder blades, he criss-crosses the strips over each shoulder and down under each arm. More bandages go horizontally around his torso and waist to shield the switch marks on his middle and lower back. The earl looks half-mummified when Sebastian secures the final trailing end, but now the cuts will not be chafed by his clothing or his movements in bed. The nightshirt and drawers Sebastian slips over him conceal most of the bandaging.

"I shall prepare a light lunch for you now. You must eat if you are to heal and recover properly. If you like, you can sleep for a while – but I will have to wake you when your meal is ready."

"I will read while I wait."

Sebastian hands him a volume of Coleridge's poetry from his nightstand, saying: "Avoid Kubla Khan, or you may doze off and be rudely awakened by me, like the poet by the man from Porlock."

"The man from Porlock?" Ciel asks, frowning.

"Do you not know how Coleridge claimed to have been interrupted by a man from Porlock while dreaming of Xanadu? It is only a short anecdote, probably an untruth on the poet's part. You may find an account of it in that book. Now, I shall send Finnian up to sit with you. If anyone else breaks into the manor to steal you away, we shall at least have the gardener here to sound the alarm, and break a few of the intruders' heads."

"I suppose you think it's funny to make regular jokes about my abductions," Ciel mutters, slipping his eye patch on in anticipation of Finny's arrival.

"Well, they are very regular, are they not, my lord?" Sebastian remarks good-humouredly, not giving Ciel a chance to reply before leaving the room.

While the gardener sits upstairs with the earl, the butler checks the larder and ice box. As deliveries were stopped two days ago in preparation for what they had thought would be an attack on the manor by Mrs Easton's mercenaries, none of the meat is as fresh as Sebastian would like it to be.

The vegetables are fine. It may be winter, but they have greenhouse carrots, cabbages, potatoes, imported onions and some rosemary. The master needs fresh meat, though, for his health. Fortunately, they have poultry on the grounds, so the butler goes outside, catches one of the less productive hens, carries her into the kitchen, and breaks her neck quickly. He plucks off her feathers, cuts her open and removes her innards, cleans the flesh, and eases the carcass into a pot of boiling water. There is no time to season the meat, but the hens on the estate are naturally sweet, and that must suffice. He imagines Agni here, cooking with "love", but he cannot rival the Brahmin in that respect, so he settles for cooking with "care".

When the flesh of the chicken is ready, Sebastian scoops the bird out of the pot and peels the meat off the bones. He returns the bones to the pot with the chopped vegetables and a sprinkling of rosemary, reduces the heat, and waits. An hour later, he strains some broth into a fine bowl for his master, adds fine slices of the potatoes, carrots and cabbage, and hand-shredded chicken meat. He is pleased to find, upon his return to the bedroom, that his master has neither been kidnapped by more thugs nor accidentally smothered by Finnian.

"Which of the poems have you been reading, Young Master?" he asks after dismissing Finny, setting the bowl on the bed tray carved from solid wood, so the boy can eat right where he is.

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

"Oh? Have you not had enough of water today?"

Ciel scowls, but deigns to reply: "I began reading Christabel, but did not like it."

"Christabel is in my opinion more sophisticated than The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Sebastian remarks as he carefully arranges the tray over his master's lap. "But I may be biased, as the Lady Geraldine seems to be modelled after an old acquaintance of mine. I wonder if Mister Coleridge knew her? It also has an unhappier ending for the humans involved than the tale of the mariner, so perhaps the watery rime was a better choice for you."

Sebastian busies himself tidying the bathroom and the bedroom while keeping an eye on Ciel. He is eating well, but does not complain about the blandness – an indication that he is not as alert as his butler would like him to be.

"Now you must sleep," he tells the boy when the last spoonful of soup and food has been swallowed.

He removes the tray and covers Ciel up to the chin with the blanket, slips his eye patch off and waits till he closes his eyes before putting the tray, serving stand and empty buckets from the bathroom out in the corridor for Finny. By then, his young master is already deep in sleep, his little body exhausted by the trials of the morning.

Sebastian watches him all afternoon, not stirring from the bedside despite not having changed out of his bullet-riddled clothing. While not at ease with the boy's slightly fitful rest, his ears hear no disorder in the lungs, and his nose detects no damage that was not already there in the wounds. Then again, he is hardly skilled in the arts of healing, and some kinds of sickness take time to develop.

He leaves his master just before evening to prepare dinner. Baldroy has not only returned from the Midford mansion, but also brought fresh supplies of meat and vegetables. While Mey-Rin sits upstairs with Ciel, Sebastian changes out of the rags his clothes have turned into, and sets about whipping up an Oriental-style dish of minced beef steamed with finely chopped ginger. The master does not like food that is too spicy, but this should be warming and restorative rather than too hot.

He boils the julienned carrots and glazes them with a light fruit syrup, so they will be easy to swallow. The kitchen has no Oriental rice at present, but he makes do with some of Agni's Indian basmati rice. Leaving Baldroy and Tanaka to serve the rest to the staff, Sebastian takes enough for the master and carries it upstairs, where he relieves Mey-Rin of her duty.

Ciel is very tired when awakened, despite having slept all day. When Sebastian asks how he feels, he says his arms and back are stiff and aching. The butler unwraps the bandages and finds one of the cuts on his back, and one on his left arm, redder than ever and discharging clear fluid mingled with blood. He cleans all the wounds and reapplies the ointment, then wraps fresh strips of bandages about him.

"I must check those other wounds as well, Young Master," he says in the most neutral tone he can modulate his voice into, for he does not want the earl to think he is making fun of him.

That the boy does not even scowl, but groggily lets Sebastian turn him over to inspect his bottom, is not a good sign. He is obviously unwell, though the bite and fingernail marks show no signs of infection, and the lungs sound unhampered. Only the cuts on the back and left arm may prove dangerous – Sebastian has, over centuries, seen the least significant wounds on mortals turn fatal once infection and gangrene set in.

"Good," he says, pulling the boy's drawers up and refastening them. "Now eat as much as you can."

Ciel struggles valiantly, but manages only half of what Sebastian dished out for him before putting his spoon down and dropping his arm. He has been able to eat this much only because of the appetising qualities of the ginger, and the softness of the carrots and rice.

"A little more," Sebastian says persuasively, seating himself on the bed to feed Ciel.

The boy takes three more mouthfuls from the spoon the butler lifts to his lips before shaking his head and sinking back onto the pillows. Sebastian removes the tray, wipes Ciel's mouth, and presses his palm to his master's forehead. He is slightly warm, but not so much that he would call it a fever. It is more likely the result of having lain in bed all day. Sebastian helps him sit up again so that he can drink some water. Ciel gulps it greedily.

"You should use the chamberpot before you sleep again, Young Master."

Ciel agrees, but Sebastian has to help him onto the pot, wipe him clean, and lift him back into bed. He washes his hands thoroughly to be particularly safe about not spreading further contamination to Ciel even though his devil's body cleans itself. Then he uses fresh washcloths to give Ciel a sponge bath wherever his skin is not covered in bandages or ointment. The boy is in no condition to sit in the tub, so he hopes this will help him feel more comfortable.

But as the evening progresses, Ciel's sleep proves restless. He tosses, kicks the blankets and mumbles about water everywhere, dead birds, sunless seas, demon women, and men from Porlock. Sebastian checks his temperature again; it is no warmer than would be expected for a boy under layers of winter bedcovers for hours.

Coddling humans does not come naturally to him, but Ciel is the only master he has willingly bound himself to on a whim. And he would never tell the child this, but he rather resembles a cat, despite his stated preference for dogs. As the devil does coddle cats instinctively, it is easier to reach a hand towards this kitten-like face and stroke his soft, dark hair until his sleep grows calmer. Perhaps, Sebastian thinks, it is what his mother used to do for him.

He becomes aware once more, as he did when talking with Agni in the town house kitchen about cooking with love, that he lacks a vital tool for performing his duties to the highest standards. But he can to some extent imitate what he lacks. So he continues to stroke the boy's hair soothingly until his breathing becomes deep and regular, and he stops tossing and kicking. To complete the illusion, Sebastian bends down and presses his lips to Ciel's hair, giving him a kiss on the temple that he imagines his mother might have given him, in the best mimicry of maternal devotion that a devil's lips can possibly craft.

It earns the earl two hours of peaceful sleep. But soon, no soothing touches can win him rest, for he begins to have nightmares, starting up in bed every half-hour or so, first commanding Sebastian to get "that disgusting man" off him, then forbidding Sebastian to touch him, and finally, to the butler's dismay, accusing him of attempting to murder him.

"Young Master," Sebastian assures him, holding him down as he struggles, doing everything not to hurt him. "I won't harm you."

"You wanted me dead – you smiled at me and left me to die!" Ciel hisses, pushing against him.

"No, my lord."

"Then what do you want?" he raves wildly. "You want something – devils always want something – do you want what that filthy man wanted? Is that what you wanted from me all along?"

"No, my lord. Not like that."

"Did I look dirty to him? Was that why he did that to me?" Ciel demands.

" _No_."

"It's all disgusting. It's all ugly..." he mumbles, falling back into a sleep that Sebastian is now certain is racked by fever and delirium. His forehead feels very hot. The butler must do something to bring the temperature down.

He pours cool water into the washbasin and starts to sponge Ciel down, leaving the damp, folded towels on his forehead and against his neck, armpits and groin. They heat up quickly against his scalding skin, and he rinses and replaces them whenever they become too warm to be of use.

To his relief, his master's temperature drops after an hour, and the next time Ciel opens his mismatched eyes, the wild look is gone from them. Instead, they look painfully conscious of what has transpired. In the light of the bedside lamp, the boy blinks slowly at his butler and sits up to accept the offer of a glass of water. After draining the glass, he lowers his head to the pillows and looks at Sebastian with shame.

"I don't know why I said all that," he murmurs. "I didn't mean any of it. It just came out of my mouth."

"You remember what you said?" Sebastian asked, curiously.

"Mostly, but it was like I wasn't the one saying it."

"It was the fever talking."

"Didn't mean it..." Ciel mumbles, drifting into sleep again.

The fever is gone, and he rests soundly. Sebastian stands by the bed and watches him sleep. He muses that he was as truthful as he could have been when he answered the boy in his fevered ravings that he had not wanted what Mrs Easton's man had. After all, he had come dangerously close to taking him, body and soul, in his earlier predatory impulse. But saying so would only have distressed him further. A truth of sorts it was, then, with an omission.

Is this child really worth all this work? Such a troublesome creature. Any other demon would by now have sunk his fangs into the nape of that fragile neck and drained the life from him while satisfying himself sexually in the depths of that snug little behind, revelling in his delightful screams before worrying about the price to pay. Any other devil but him. Somehow, somewhere, he has chosen to bother with this fiddly burden named Ciel Phantomhive.

So in the dark of that long winter night, when Ciel stirs again and opens his eyes to gaze at him by the guttering lamplight, Sebastian is unexpectedly pleased when the boy murmurs: "You saved my life."

"Did I, my lord?" he asks softly.

"Yes. You breathed life into me when I was dead," Ciel smiles.

"When I pulled you from the river?"

"I came to life to the feel of your mouth on mine. Did you like the taste of me?" the boy asks, still smiling, raising his head and upper body from the pillows.

Sebastian, aroused by the warmth and invitation in his master's voice, replies: "Yes."

"Do it again. Breathe life into me once more, like you did by the river."

The devil half-slinks onto the bed, leaning towards his master with a degree of interest that surprises him, fired by the knowledge that he has already denied himself this child's soul twice and deserves at least the reward of a proper kiss. He had never intended this before, but as the boy has had an awakening through his experiences at the mill, he may as well be the one to guide him. He feels Ciel's arms circling his neck, and lowers his face to the beautiful one beneath him, ready to press his mouth to his to taste all of his tainted humanity and uniqueness – until his senses alert him to the fact that something is wrong.

"Young Master," he says suddenly, stopping and drawing back. "You do not know what you are doing."

"I do."

"You do _not_ ," he says firmly, though with considerable regret, as he takes Ciel's arms and lowers them to his side, gently compelling him to recline against the pillows once more. "You have no idea what you are doing, because you are burning up."

The fever has returned.


	15. Imagination

Baldroy scratches his head as he stares at the piece of paper with Sebastian's detailed, elegantly penned instructions on how to cook three particular dishes without destroying the kitchen. He is not entirely certain where some of the listed ingredients are kept, or _what_ some of them are.

This is the second sheet that has come his way today, for the butler has not left the master's room since last evening. Mey-Rin, who handed him the note, was allowed into the bedroom for a few minutes this morning to carry hot water in. She was also admitted a half-hour later, when Sebastian asked her to bring up the master's chess set. According to the housemaid-sniper, the earl is quite ill. A wound on his back is infected, and he swings between fever and chills, slipping in and out of states of lucidity and delirium despite Sebastian's best efforts to stabilise his condition. They cannot call for a doctor, because no one – least of all the master himself in his moments of sense – wants any outsider to see the scores of cuts Sophia Easton's people inflicted on him.

Baldroy swears and punches the kitchen counter, imagining Mrs Easton's face under his fist. He and the others were told only last night by Sebastian, through Tanaka, how badly injured the master was. The butler has specified that if anyone from the Midford mansion inquires, they are to say that His Lordship has a bad cold, and needs peace and quiet to recover; if anybody else asks, they are to say that the earl is not at home.

Mey-Rin is unable to give much first-hand information about the master's health, for she is so long-sighted, and her eyeglasses so ineffective in showing her what is up close, that she can only say that he seemed his usual self when she was allowed to approach the bedside. But minutes later, he was kicking the blankets off, raving about a dead albatross, and trying to turn onto his back, which Sebastian would not allow him to do because the infected cut between his shoulder blades was badly swollen.

It is twenty minutes to noon, Baldroy notes from the table clock, as he searches for the oats that Sebastian wants cooked with milk into a light porridge for the master. Although the earl has only been seriously ill since last night, the manor feels as if it has had a pall cast over it forever. Every routine seems fractured, as if all is in danger of falling apart.

***

Sebastian hears Tanaka's tread on the floorboards outside the earl's room. The footsteps stop, then retreat, as Tanaka leaves on the table outside the door items that need looking at. Despite the old man's vague sense of self, he has been through enough of the master's childhood ailments to have internalised the procedures for times when it is not convenient for the butler to leave the earl's room.

Sebastian rinses out another lot of small towels in cool water and replaces them on Ciel's neck and under his arms. He sponges his forehead but cannot leave a towel there, for the boy is on his tummy, face turned to one side. He must sleep that way because the cut on his back is too swollen to be pressed against the mattress.

He puts a gentle hand against the earl's forehead to check his temperature, and sponges his face once more. He does not wake. Sebastian decides it may be safe to leave the bedside for a moment to bring in whatever is outside. The items prove to be a few letters and a parcel. _Good man,_ Sebastian thinks, for Tanaka has obediently left the parcel despite its being addressed to him. He carries the items into the room and only has time to note that none of the letters bears the royal seal before he sees that Ciel has flipped over onto his back.

 _Difficult brat._

Leaving the things on the nearest cabinet, he hurries to the bed, where he turns the boy onto his front again without waking him. This is a quiet spell compared with the fevered struggles of the morning – but even in quiet spells, the child manages to do what he is not supposed to. He lowers the blanket to Ciel's hips, raises his nightshirt, and looks under the strips of linen. The damage is minimal, but the pressure has squeezed out pus from one corner of the swollen wound. That may be a good or bad thing.

With fresh linen bandages, he wipes the pus away and carefully presses out more fluid from the abscess. He would have preferred to let the abscess burst naturally, but as the skin sealing it is now broken, he chooses to drain it. If it does not spread or fill up again, there is a good chance his master will recover smoothly.

The butler then partially unwraps the bandages over Ciel's left arm and checks the other wound that caused concern last night. Unlike the cut on the earl's back, this one seems to be holding steady, getting no worse. Satisfied, he rewraps the linen and leans over to whisper into his master's ear as he covers him with the blanket: "If you roll onto your back once more, I will tie you face-down to the bed-frame with your own silk stockings."

Ciel sleeps on, not hearing.

A smile touches Sebastian's lips, and he adds in a lighter whisper: "Before that, I shall remove _all_ your garments, so I can look at your injuries more easily. And I shall throw your blankets into the fireplace, so you will have to beg me to hold you to keep you warm."

Sebastian smirks. The child appears utterly defenceless, less capable than a kitten of protecting himself as he mumbles in his sleep and shifts his face a little on the flattish pillow he finds more comfortable than the better-stuffed ones while he is obliged to lie prone.

The butler is still very much put out over having the reward for his restraint and care snatched away literally from under his nose last night by his own peculiar sense of demonic pride and propriety. So he consoles himself by indulging his imagination. Strolling to the foot of the bed, he pictures Ciel spread-eagled on his belly, wrists and ankles bound to the four corners of the bed frame with the softest of silk, straining to lift his head to look over his shoulder at Sebastian. What should the boy be saying, feeling, thinking?

He could have him seductive and welcoming, speaking through a salacious smile: _Do you like what you see? Is this how you want me?_ Or eager to be used, pleading with Sebastian to take him, panting: _Please... don't leave me like this..._ _I'll be good, I promise..._ Or terrified out of his mind, screaming in pain as his devil ploughs into him, tearing him open, lubricating his passage with blood, drinking his tears.

Perhaps, in addition to those attractive scenarios, he should bind the child's thighs at their very tops to the ends of two long cravats and secure the other ends to the ceiling to have that inviting bottom hiked up off the bed. That will give his hands easy access to the neat little cock that would otherwise be pressed into the mattress. The boy should know some pleasure to accompany the pain. Maybe he will beg to be stroked along that small-but-growing shaft of his, once he starts liking it... although Sebastian must admit that he has never known him to have erections triggered by sexual arousal. All boys, even infants, regularly have non-sexually-prompted erections, and the earl is no different. However, at his age, most adolescents would be surreptitiously exploring their bodies under their blankets. He has not. Sebastian has never scented the least sexual interest in anything from his master, and knows for certain that he has never touched himself in that way.

Well, he can always learn. _Please, Sebastian... faster... uhnnnng... yessss..._

Sebastian lets a wry smile escape him. How absurd. Of course the child will not be seductive or eager. Neither will he cry or beg. The devil has a suspicion that he will on the contrary find some way to whip around and command him to castrate himself, then feed his dick and balls to the dogs. He huffs in amusement.

"What is so funny?" comes a displeased mumble from the bed.

Ciel has just awoken. He is not nearly well or alert enough to be fully aware of his butler's peculiar mood, but he has heard the huff.

"You are, Young Master," Sebastian replies smoothly, going round to the side of the bed.

"You think it funny that I'm sick?" Ciel mutters, reaching for his glass of water, which Sebastian hands to him. The fever still plagues him, but the temperature is lower, and he is cognizant of his actions.

"No. I think it funny that even when you are sick and helpless, and I imagine all the ways in which I might best you, you still have a way of turning the tables on me in my imagination."

"What do you mean?"

Sebastian cannot possibly answer that he was just picturing himself thrusting his perfectly formed cock deep into his master's sinfully tiny arsehole while schooling the boy's penis in the pleasures of the devil's warm hand, so he opts for a strategic omission, and gestures to the chessboard which he had Mey-Rin carry up earlier today.

"That's not how we last left the game," Ciel remarks, looking over at the chair on which the board rests, remembering where the pieces were the night before he left the manor with Mrs Easton.

"I have been moving the pieces around."

"You've been playing against yourself?"

"I have been moving the pieces for _you_ ," Sebastian replies.

"Imagining what I would do?"

"Somewhat, yes."

"And you _lost_ the last move?" Ciel asks disbelievingly.

"I believe I did."

Sebastian holds up one of his black knights, which Ciel's bishop has just removed from the battlefield.

"Idiot," Ciel mutters.

"An astute observation, my lord."

The boy is in no state to analyse the game, however, for the persistent fever is keeping him hazy and aching. Sebastian persuades him to drink more water and use the chamberpot, then gets him to sit up, for he can hear Mey-Rin coming down the corridor with the porridge Baldroy has prepared. He opens the door, takes the tray from her, and allows her in to see the master. She trips over the edge of the carpet by the bed, and Sebastian has to catch her with one hand while balancing the tray in the other.

"I'm so sorry!" she cries, blushing deeply to be this close to the handsome butler.

"We've got to do something about those glasses of yours," Ciel murmurs tiredly.

"But I _like_ this pair!" Mey-Rin protests, almost in tears of joy to hear Ciel speaking normally instead of murmuring frantically about dead albatrosses. "It's a good disguise so people won't know I'm not what I appear to be. And more importantly, _you_ gave it to me, Young Master!"

"Then I'll give you another, better pair," Ciel sighs.

"Oooohhhh..."

Sebastian wonders how a girl who is so sharp-minded and ruthless behind a sniper's rifle can be so addle-brained as a housemaid. It occurs to him that he is not the only one who forgets himself in the roles he plays.

"Thank you for bringing the porridge up, Mey-Rin," the butler says. "Would you be so good now as to tell the other staff that the master is a little better?"

"Yes, at once!" Mey-Rin cries before rushing out of the room, mercifully not falling over anything else.

Sebastian shuts the door after her and draws a light side table up to the bedside. He places the bowl of porridge on it.

"Try to eat some milk porridge this way, Young Master," he coaxes. "Lying in bed all the time is not bringing your temperature down. Perhaps sitting up for a while every now and again will speed your recovery."

Ciel's head is clearly swimming too much for him to agree that sitting up is an improvement, but he begins spooning the warm, milk-softened oats into his mouth. He remarks that he can barely taste it, for his tongue has gone to sleep. But Sebastian concludes from the appearance, smell and texture of the porridge that Baldroy has done a good job. And the earl does succeed in eating most of it before putting the spoon down.

"Well done," says Sebastian, removing the table. "Do you need to lie down again?"

"I'll lie on one side. My neck is aching from my lying prone."

"Let me see if I can do anything about that."

Standing by the bed, Sebastian removes his gloves and presses his thumbs and fingers firmly, but not too hard, into the back of Ciel's neck, on either side of the column of bone. Ciel draws in his breath sharply, and for a second Sebastian wonders if he is hurting him. But that breath is exhaled in a throaty "Mmmm..." as warm as melting butter, and which instantly features in Sebastian's mind in a plethora of erotic scenarios.

 _Mmmm... yes, harder... more... deeper, right there... lower down... yes... oh, Sebastian..._

"Is that good for you?" the butler asks, massaging his way down that delicate neck. _So pale, so breakable._

"That feels good," Ciel murmurs, his dark head drooping like a bowing flower on a fine stem as the stiffness melts away under Sebastian's hands.

The butler ministers to him for several more minutes, then remarks: "You look too tired to sit up thus for much longer, but don't lie down again at once – let your head clear. Please allow me..."

He seats himself on the bed and lifts Ciel onto him so the boy is kneeling, facing him, straddling his lap.

"There, like this," Sebastian says, drawing his master's head towards him until he is resting his forehead against his chest. The devil brings his arms round the boy's back and continues massaging his neck. The warmth of the child in his lap – inner thighs pressed to Sebastian's trousers, crotch nestled on the groove between his butler's legs – pleases him immensely. When Ciel makes his buttery, throaty murmur of approval against his chest, Sebastian smiles, and his eyes glow as he steals a deep sniff of his master's hair, perfectly scented with sweat and heat.

Minutes later, Ciel is asleep in his lap, drooling into his shirt. Sebastian continues to hold him, gently massaging his neck and the uninjured parts of his shoulders. Only when the boy stirs does he lift him up carefully and settle him on the bed so he is lying on his left side, head on a plump pillow. He wets more towels to keep him cool, and also positions two soft but heavy pillows behind Ciel's upper and lower back, so he cannot turn over easily.

Then the devil goes up to the chessboard and swallows Ciel's white bishop with his black rook. He follows that move with something he has never before done in the manor while in the earl's presence: he pulls up a chair to the foot of Ciel's bed and sits down as if he were his master's equal, someone entitled to take a seat unbidden in His Lordship's bedroom. He crosses his right leg smoothly over his left and leans his right elbow on the armrest, propping up his head on the back of his hand. Gazing at the sleeping figure before him, he contemplates the state of play in a battle that the boy does not even know he is engaged in.

Ciel moves in his sleep and would be supine by now if not for the two pillows, which relieve the pressure on the swollen cut although he is partially on his back. A minute later, he apparently feels too warm, for he kicks off the blankets to give Sebastian a charming view of his drawers riding high up his slightly parted legs, right knee resting on his left foot.

Sebastian's eyes fix on the small, tempting bulge at the apex of his slim thighs, and soon, the Ciel in his mind is presenting himself, whispering haltingly: _Is the scent of him gone from me... there...? Wash it off – no, lick it off me like you licked the dirt off my fingers... lick it all clean..._

Delightful proposal.

But that would be impossible. After what those accursed creatures did to him at the mill, he will hardly welcome anyone's mouth there for some time, unless he can be held down and thoroughly pleasured against his will until he learns to enjoy it.

Sebastian can see him now, bound face-up to the bed, narrow chest heaving and hips bucking as he pants and strains to push himself deeper, deeper past his devil's lips. He can feel that small shaft growing hard against his tongue, swelling inside his mouth. He can practically taste the essence of the boy like a creamy, salty liqueur of the greatest rarity.

Then he laughs quietly to himself, for unexpectedly, the thought shoots into his mind that the child is far more likely to do his best to pee in his mouth just to get his revenge for being thus violated again. Not that he would not enjoy the taste of that pee, but the earl's intent behind it would be so full of venom that it might well poison whoever consumes it, demon or human.

"Very good, Young Master," whispers Sebastian, rising from the chair and allowing Ciel's queen to remove his rook.

"Water..." Ciel mumbles just as the butler completes his move.

It has not been easy for Sebastian to tell, these two days, when the earl's utterances are conscious. He responds to everything, for being a negligent butler would be unacceptable – indeed, he is in danger of paying too much attention to his master. As Ciel struggles upright, Sebastian supports his lower back to help him sit up. He is soon managing well, holding the glass on his own and drinking easily.

"Does your head still hurt, Young Master?"

"Not as much as before, I think." Another sip of water, followed by a question: "Did I fall asleep in your lap?"

"Yes."

Sebastian scrutinises his face to see if he is blushing, but the fever has generally heightened the colour in his cheeks, which are still marked with welts and scratches, anyway. His raised temperature makes it harder to discern if he is reddening for emotional reasons, or poor health.

"You put me back onto the bed without my waking up at all?"

"I did."

"Good God. So anything could happen to me while I'm sick and I won't know about it? I'm bloody useless when I'm ill," he mutters.

Sebastian holds his tongue despite the gaping-wide opening presented to him, but the earl catches the smirk on his face.

"Damn you," the boy growls. "I know you're dying to say that I'm bloody useless even when I'm not ill."

"Am I?" Sebastian smiles.

"I may sleep like a baby when I'm sick, but I'm not as ignorant as one."

"Oh, I know _very_ well that you are not a baby, Young Master."

Something about the way Sebastian says that, and the expression in his garnet eyes, makes Ciel look curiously at him, but the butler is walking away towards the cabinet near the door. When he turns back holding a parcel and letters, his face is impossible to read again.

"These arrived today. The parcel addressed to Tanaka is from Funtom. It must be intended for you."

Ciel indicates with a nod that Sebastian should open the parcel. He undoes the string and brown paper and lifts the lid of the box. The earl looks in, sees a family of plush rabbits resting in its base, and reaches in to take them out. They are exactly as the toy designer had drawn them in his proposal, with all the features Ciel had specified a week ago that he wished to see in the finished products – soft hair in natural colours, plump bodies that are not too fat, paw surfaces in a contrasting colour from the body hair, and faces stitched to look appealing, but with no smiles.

"Perfect," he says softly, caressing the child-rabbit before setting it down beside Mother and Father Rabbit. "These will sell. We must think of good names for them."

"Would you like to keep these samples?" Sebastian asks.

"What use have I for toys?" Ciel responds rhetorically.

Sebastian returns the rabbits to the box and puts it back on the cabinet. While he does that, Ciel opens the first letter. Business matters. Nothing urgent. Another card is an invitation to a ball. That is of no interest to him. The third letter is folded into an inexpensive envelope, and penned on simple writing paper in a neat hand. He skips to the end and looks at the sender's name, then starts again at the beginning and reads it in detail. It is from the vicar of the church south of the Thames, in whose compound Sebastian destroyed the ghoul controlled by Lady Susan Rothstein.

The vicar begins by apologising to the earl for writing to him without an introduction, but asks if he may be so bold as to think that the circumstances under which they met might be introduction enough. He expresses his gratitude to the earl and his butler for saving his life that night. He says that he knows their intention must have been more to destroy the ghoul than to preserve his existence, but nonetheless, he has been preserved by their actions and the grace of God, and therefore offers a simple thank-you. He closes with these paragraphs:

" _I might never have known who you were if not for the appearance of a strange man and his manservant at my door the very next morning after we met in the churchyard. The gentleman was young, but had silver hair, and seemed to know that the evil spirit had been in the churchyard the night before. I told him honestly that it had been destroyed by the butler of a young boy with a covered eye, and he believed me without doubting me for a moment. He sounded relieved that I had not been hurt. I then asked if he knew who you were, and he told me that he thought you were the Earl of Phantomhive._

" _Afterwards, I made enquiries about your place of residence. When I found myself with time to spare from my parish duties, I tried to call on you at your town house, but was told by the servants of a neighbouring house that you had left for your manor outside London._

" _I do not know if the men who appeared at my doorstep are known to you, but the gentleman did tell me very freely, when I asked, that his name was Percival Ambrose, so I do not think he would object to my relating it to you in a letter._

" _Thank you again, my lord, for your intervention that evening. I shall always be grateful to God for your timely appearance, and your butler's also."_

" _Yours faithfully,_

" _John Jarvis"_

Ciel shows the letter to Sebastian, and says: "We may now assume that the silver-haired man William Thompson told us about is alive, and still youthful, though he appears to no longer be using succubi – at least, I infer that from what the vicar says about his seeming relieved that he was not harmed by Susan Rothstein's creature."

"His name is Percival Ambrose," Sebastian remarks. "That gives us a point from which to investigate him, and learn if he truly is causing no further harm to people."

Ciel takes the letter back from Sebastian and looks over it again, assessing the tone and words. "It troubles me that this Percival Ambrose knew who I was. But it was decent of the vicar to write to thank us after learning my identity. He seems a good man. Unlike so many who write begging letters, he appears to want nothing from me."

"I concluded that he was a decent human being when I saw how he tried to protect his cat that night," Sebastian notes.

"You and your cats," Ciel mutters, folding up the letter and indicating to Sebastian that he should put it into the drawer of his nightstand.

"You can tell a lot about people from the way they treat cats," Sebastian insists, closing the drawer before draping a dressing gown over his master's shoulders. "Are you well enough for me to leave you for a while to prepare dinner? Baldroy has been so good about not blowing up the kitchen that I fear an explosion is overdue. I'll send him up to sit with you while I am gone. Of course I will first remove every cigarette and match from his person."

Ciel nods. He glances at Sebastian's face again, for something in his eyes is disturbingly different from before... or is his illness altering his perceptions? When the butler leaves, the earl looks over at the chessboard curiously. The carnage in the shape of the toppled pieces on either side stirs up snatches of fevered visions of the past days, stretching back through the oddness of his life in the last three years. Lost in the memories and half-memories of words and deeds from the near and distant past, he starts when a figure appears in the doorway, but it is only Baldroy.

"Hey, Your Lordship," the chef says, fairly quietly for someone of his hearty nature. "Feelin' better?"

"Yes, thank you," Ciel says, relieved to see that the man has no cigarette dangling from his mouth. "Sit down."

"Sebastian's cooking up a storm in the kitchen already," Baldroy remarks, pulling up a chair. "Never seen a man move as fast as him when he's determined to get something done. He's been taking good care of you, eh?"

"He must have, as I'm not dead," Ciel remarks.

"Need to lie down?" Baldroy asks when he sees the boy shifting back towards the middle of the bed.

"I think I do," the earl replies, letting the man help him out of his dressing gown as he reclines on his right side. The chef is not inexperienced at caring for the sick and injured, for he was a soldier in his earlier years, and a good one too.

As Baldroy leans over to pull the blanket up to Ciel's chest, the earl notes that he smells of smoke and sweat, milk and grease. It does not bother him at present. He finds it an honest sort of odour, earthy and real and straightforward... like everything Sebastian is not. Sebastian does not smell of anything at all.

When Baldroy sits down and gazes at him affectionately, Ciel realises that he has grown so accustomed to the devil's inscrutability that he has forgotten how very like open books some humans can be. It strikes him in the same moment that he has not the slightest fear of this man before him, or the other servants – but Sebastian always, _always_ gives him pause, always makes him think twice, always sends a shiver through him even during those times when he trusts him the most.

Something nags at him, something he cannot quite grasp. He feels an urgent need to pin it down. Something spoken by someone – himself? Sebastian? Something that happened... no, he can't remember. But the vague memory of words rolling off his tongue finds him murmuring aloud: "Did you ever save my life?"

"Uhm," the chef scratches his head lightly. "Can't say for sure that I ever saved your life _directly_ , but if you count those gunfights against gangs and other intruders, maybe, yeah, I might've saved your life."

That is it. Saving his life. Those were the words: _You saved my life._ Who said that?

Then the vision returns in its sickened haziness: himself, smiling at Sebastian in the heat of his fever and as good as offering him a kiss – mortifying to recall, for sure, though excusable considering his illness and the echoes of that day's events. But what stuns him is the memory of Sebastian _accepting_ that offer, slinking onto the bed and bending down towards him, before holding back when he realises the fever is making him behave unconsciously.

 _He_ wanted _to kiss me,_ is the thought that hits Ciel like a thunderbolt. He suddenly recalls glimpse after glimpse of the devil's strange eyes, the way he looked at him, the scattered huffs of amusement, and it starts to fall into place. The chessboard. The moves. They have been engaged in a battle for two days, and he is only just discovering that he has been fighting.

"You don't look so well," Baldroy says worriedly, as Ciel shivers and pulls the blanket up to his chin. "I'll get Sebastian."

"No," Ciel says firmly.

"No?"

"No. Don't call him. Just sit right there and say nothing. I need to think."

***

Sebastian takes over from Baldroy when he has finished cooking, telling the chef to dish out the rest of the food for himself and the others. For the master, he has selected the tenderest pieces of venison cooked in a light wine sauce, the choicest greens mashed with butter, and the finest slices of roast potatoes.

He finds Ciel very quiet after his seeming improvement while reading the letters earlier. But the boy eats well, better than last night or at any time today. Sebastian touches his brow after he has eaten his last mouthful of the dinner, and confirms that the fever is gone.

"Good. Now to clean your wounds, and change your bandages. Would you like a quick wash in the bathroom? I have hot water ready."

Ciel nods.

Sebastian mixes hot and cold water into an empty pail in the bathroom. He undresses him and removes his bandages, then stands him in the tub while using a scoop to pour the water over him from his shoulders down so he can wash briskly without immersing his wounds in the bath. A quick lathering all over with gentle soap and another two rinses precede a careful pouring of the water over his head to clean his hair as well.

Sebastian does not dawdle, for the master must not catch a chill. He pats him dry quickly, bundles him into a large towel, and returns him to the bedroom, where he gets the fire going before unwrapping and dressing him. Regardless of his haste, he has ample time to look over his master's body, note that the swollen wound seems to be getting no worse, and indulge in a few more fantasies: _Touch me, Sebastian, like this, right here..._

His imagined scenario reaches its peak as he finishes medicating and re-bandaging the wounds, so the boy is unclothed aside from the strips of linen over his arms and torso. _Ciel ejaculating all over his hand, all over his mouth, all over –_

"You did save my life, you know," Ciel states abruptly, as he stands up to let Sebastian help him into his drawers.

Sebastian is startled, but does not show it. "I beg your pardon, Young Master?" he asks quietly while he kneels before the boy to slide the garment up over his hips.

"You pulled me from the water and returned life to my body," the child continues.

"Why are you bringing this up?' Sebastian asks, fastening the small, flat buttons of the drawers.

For answer, Ciel leans forward and presses a kiss to his surprised butler's forehead. "That's for saving me from Mrs Easton."

Another kiss on the devil's right cheek, accompanied by the words: "That's for taking revenge on the men who hurt me."

A third kiss planted on the left cheek, accompanied by: "That's for looking after me so perfectly since I fell ill."

A fourth kiss on his butler's chin, followed by: "That's for honourably not violating me the way that disgusting man did even when I was too sick to know that I was inviting you to – yes, I do remember now."

He leans forward again, and moves his face towards Sebastian's lips, and the devil holds his breath. But out of the blue, the child's right hand lands hard on his butler's left cheek, dealing him a stinging slap.

As an astonished Sebastian processes the blow, Ciel straightens up, glares into his garnet eyes, and states: "And _that's_ for _thinking_ of violating me at all."

The boy walks over to the chessboard. He is still unsteady on his feet, and weak from his illness, but he moves with determination and shifts his queen before Sebastian's king, for whom the hobbling escape of a square at a time would be pointless because it is hemmed in by the white queen, knight and rook.

"Check," says Ciel.

"That wasn't the way I left the game," Sebastian says calmly, rising and walking up to Ciel's side.

"I think we both know how to bend the rules when it suits us, Sebastian," Ciel replies, looking up at him. "Your move? Or do you resign the game?"

"Given the state of things, Young Master, I yield this game to you."


	16. Intent

"According to these customs and immigration records, an Englishman named Percival Ambrose sailed from Bremen and arrived in London two days before we got rid of Susan Rothstein and her succubus," Ciel remarks, peering at the dog-eared books on the table before him.

They are in a cramped room on Scotland Yard premises, looking at the documentation that Lord Randall has helped them obtain access to. It was through the Commissioner that they were able to request a search for records of the entry into this country of a person named Percival Ambrose.

"He was accompanied by his German manservant, Carsten Wolf," Ciel observes, peering at the notes on the page.

"Carsten?" Sebastian asks sharply from where he stands near the door, leafing through the decades-old police reports of the deaths that Ambrose is believed to have caused.

"Does that mean something to you?"

"Yes," the butler replies, approaching the desk. "On the day you recovered enough from your illness to go downstairs for dinner, I mentioned how I was pointed in the right direction towards Lady Elizabeth, do you recall that?"

"The other devil, who seemed 'wrong'? Yes, I remember."

"He told me that his master called him Carsten."

"So this Ambrose is for some reason getting himself involved – through his demon, at least – in the things we find ourselves involved in?" Ciel murmurs thoughtfully.

"It would seem so."

"What are they up to?"

"I cannot answer that at present."

"How do we find out?"

"We may run about doing days of research and investigation," Sebastian says. "Or we may speculate. But if you want my advice, I would suggest that we wait for them to come to us."

"What makes you think they will come to us?"

"From the vicar's letter, we know that Ambrose and his devil tracked down Susan Rothstein's succubus to the churchyard – perhaps with the aim of destroying it themselves? Not long after that, his devil directed me to the place where Lady Elizabeth was held, and revealed that he had been watching Mrs Easton's people. Ambrose may have taken an interest in you – either because you destroyed the succubus, or for other reasons. If that is so, he will make contact sooner or later."

"There have been no reports of suspicious deaths like the murders committed at Susan Rothstein's behest? Or of attacks on people like what William Thompson suffered as a young man?"

"Not from the police, not from common talk in public houses and gentlemen's clubs, and not from The Undertaker. The few Phantomhive records that have survived since your great-grandfather's time – when Ambrose was last in England – make no mention of such incidents. But the only papers that survived were those that happened to be in the town house when the first fire destroyed the manor, so they are hardly comprehensive."

"Then going by all other records, Ambrose appears to have harmed no one since he killed criminals in England half a century ago," Ciel remarks. "Perhaps it isn't necessary for us to investigate him so thoroughly. Do we really want to bring him to justice for his acts from fifty years past, killing people who, by all accounts, deserved to die?"

"Is that a rhetorical question, my lord?" Sebastian asks.

Before Ciel can reply, Sebastian puts a finger to his lips to caution him that he can hear someone coming down the passageway. A half-minute later, the door opens, and Lord Randall enters.

"Well?" the Commissioner asks.

"We have his date of arrival in England, the name of the person accompanying him, and the hotel at which they stated they would be staying," Ciel tells him. "But they are likely to have moved. What we must decide now is whether to leave him alone, as he appears to have harmed no one, or to pursue him for the murders of half a century past."

"As I said before, the case is officially over for the Yard," says Lord Randall. "But at the least hint of trouble from this Ambrose, we shall reopen files from as far back as we must, take action, and request your assistance."

"Of course," says Ciel.

Ever since Abberline's death, he has declined all payments from the Commissioner – or "bribes", as Abberline used to term them – for solving cases that the police are unable to. It may be part of the reason for Randall's increasing willingness to work with him.

"Lord Phantomhive, may I ask if the Lady Elizabeth has recovered from her ordeal?" the Commissioner asks the question awkwardly, for it does not come naturally to him to show outward concern for other people.

"Thank you for inquiring after her health. My cousin is quite well now. In fact, she will be visiting the Phantomhive manor tomorrow, with Lady Midford."

"I am pleased to hear that," he replies gruffly. He had personally visited the Midford manor the day after the kidnapping to interview the marchioness and her daughter, and had been shocked to find that Elizabeth was such a small and innocent girl. He had not thought till then that Sophia Easton could be so cold-blooded.

Randall adds: "It may interest you to know that Mrs Easton has been held in Newgate Prison these eight days. I telegraphed His Royal Highness in Denmark to ask if he would consider her case as linked to that of her sons, but the prince has decided, for now, not to regard her offences as connected to the treasonous schemes of George and Robert Easton. Because it was necessary for me to be cryptic in such a message, I explained the case in greater detail in a letter, which one of my own men has sailed for Denmark to deliver by hand. That was four days ago – he may be reading it just now."

"I doubt that His Royal Highness would wish to add the weight of a connection with treason to Mrs Easton's crimes. After all, she is personally acquainted with the Princess of Wales."

"True, but such a development might be the only sure way of obtaining justice," Lord Randall explains. "In recent years, I have seen far too many accusations of attempted murder by the aristocracy brought before the courts and let off with shockingly short prison terms. Such nonsense is a far cry from the severe justice my grandfather told me of. In the years before Her Majesty was crowned, even children as young as eight would be sentenced to death and hanged for stealing food."

"We surely do not wish to return to those days, Lord Randall," Ciel says.

"No. Not on my life. But we have veered too far in the other direction. Our judges and juries are easily swayed by good names and persuasive lawyers. Though they may sentence Mrs Easton to hard labour because her intended victim was the child of a marquess, she may well be free in eighteen months. That is, if I go by the last case in which a nobleman was brought to trial for kidnapping and attempting to murder his cousin. The evidence was compelling enough, in my view, to have warranted a sentence of death, but he only suffered having to walk the treadmill six hours a day, for eighteen months. Then he was released."

"If you are referring to the Richard Layer case, I recall that by the time he was freed, his health was broken, and he has been an invalid since, scarcely able to get out of bed," Ciel says. "Perhaps it was punishment enough."

"Perhaps."

"Let the courts decide," Ciel states, standing up and returning the immigration records to the Commissioner. "Nature and society have their ways of judging people who have not received the sentences they deserved. Whatever becomes of Mrs Easton, I shall take every precaution to ensure that she never touches my cousin again."

"I do not doubt that," Randall says. "But I must ask: Are you certain you have none of your own grievances against Mrs Easton to report to me? The men at the mill were all dead, as your man said, apparently the result of a dispute within the gang. But we rounded up some of her other people, and what they told us of her scheme suggested that she had seized you and–"

"I am alive, and well," Ciel interjects. "Between us, she did attempt to murder me to avenge her sons, but she did not succeed. I do not want my name brought into this."

"You are certain?"

"I am. When will her case, and those of her sons, be heard?" Ciel asks.

"The courts may hear her case in two or three months. The Easton brothers' closed-court trial could begin when His Royal Highness returns from his travels."

"Let us learn the outcomes before we determine the need for further preventive action."

"If that is truly your decision..."

"It is. Good day, Commissioner Randall."

Ciel leaves the room, Sebastian close behind him.

It has been a week since the slap, and only five days since Ciel was well enough to leave his bedroom. But the boy is up and about, doing what he believes must be done within his sphere of responsibility. A letter from Queen Victoria, which arrived yesterday, has certainly galvanised him.

Before opening the letter, he had expected only new orders from Her Majesty to investigate one thing or another that was casting a shadow over her kingdom and her people. But the letter proved to be an informal one of appreciation. In it, the queen said that the crown prince had visited her in Balmoral before leaving for Denmark to confess in person what had happened. He admitted that he had been foolish to have indulged in the pursuits the Easton brothers had led him to, and had no desire to live his life hiding behind the deeds of those who would hide _his_ misdeeds.

" _Thank you, dear boy, for casting light upon the errors of our eldest. He confesses that while he cannot give up his mistresses – for he declares that he is extremely fond of them – he will assuredly eschew ever again engaging in anything at all like what the Easton brothers involved him in. Therefore, for bringing justice to this case instead of concealment, and the good it has done, you have our heartfelt gratitude."_

Those words are giving Ciel a sense of slowly being freed from the less noble aspects of his role as the Queen's Watchdog. His place in the world will always be tinged with darkness, but he believes now that the darkness may gradually become the shadow of justice, and cease to be the murkiness of dishonour.

"Will you rest at the town house today, or return to the manor, Young Master?" Sebastian asks as they walk towards where they have parked the carriage.

"We will return to the manor," Ciel decides.

"Yes, sir."

Sebastian opens the carriage door for Ciel and helps him in, holding his hand a second longer than necessary. At the same time, one of his fingers slips under Ciel's sleeve and strokes his wrist. The earl notices, of course – for that little caress of his inner wrist is electrifying – but he does not entirely know what to make of these little touches that Sebastian has been giving him for days now. He is not outright molesting him and thus may not warrant rebuke; but he is subtly making frequent and unnecessary contact, and thus warrants careful watching.

The devil has begun a new game.

"A thread is coming loose from the hem of your shorts," Sebastian observes once Ciel is seated.

The butler, who has from the very first also played the role of valet to the earl, leans into the carriage, whips out a tiny pair of embroidery scissors from a small leather pouch tucked into one of his pockets, and snips off the trailing thread. In the course of that minor operation, he places his face so close to Ciel's leg that just before he straightens up with the scissors and thread in his hands, his lips brush the skin of his master's thigh.

It sends an interesting shiver through the earl, but in the same instant he notices it, Sebastian is out of the carriage, closing the door. The butler springs into the driver's seat and manoeuvres the vehicle away from the Yard's headquarters, towards the outskirts of London, leaving Ciel with two hours to himself to think.

He has not discussed the slap with Sebastian. In fact, they have not spoken of the incident at all. The earl knows painfully well that all he needed to do that night – or do now – is to say the words: "Sebastian, I command you to never think lecherous thoughts of me again", and it will be over. Even if it should transpire that a contract with a devil does not allow for legislation of the demon's thoughts, such an order would express in no uncertain terms the master's wishes and expectations.

That Sebastian continues to bestow passing touches on him tells Ciel that he has failed to put his foot down. But he asks himself: _Should I?_

On the night of the slap, he had considered Sebastian a guard dog he trusted to protect him, but whose dominant nature must be checked by keeping the dog respectful of him. He had believed that his butler, having observed the effect of Langton's molestations on him, had been toying with similar tactics to make a play for greater power within the bounds of their new contract, as demons surely do. The kisses followed by the slap and the final chess moves were his declaration that while he was grateful for his protection and care, he would not be letting the devil get the better of him so easily.

Transgression, rebuke, restoration of order – that was what he had thought their exchange was all about.

Now, he is not as confident that he has assessed the situation accurately. He _knows_ that Sebastian was thinking unspeakable thoughts about him. However, the apparent affection in the butler's little touches has left him no longer sure that he knows _why_. Most troubling is that while Langton's abuse of him turned his stomach and continues to haunt his nightmares, he lacks the same negative visceral reaction to the devil's approaches. Offended in principle he may be, but curious he is too. As for Sebastian, he seems content simply to begin a new game while saying nothing of the old.

They ought to discuss this seriously, except that Ciel's uncertainty means he is unsure of what to say. The individual who was his advisor before his meeting with the Prince of Wales would be able to advise him again here, were it not for the fact that that very advisor is the one he now needs to have a talk with. He finds it all very provoking and intriguing.

For the time being, it seems that their games must remain the medium of their communication.

***

"Everything is ready for the visit of Lady Francis and Miss Elizabeth, my lord," Sebastian announces the next morning, as he dresses Ciel.

His wounds are healing, all the shallower ones protected by scabs that look promisingly dry and thin, suggesting that they will leave behind very little scarring when they eventually fall off. Even the wound that was infected is doing well. It is the only one that still needs a bandage over it, but it is closing up cleanly.

Strong, sure hands arrange, fasten and straighten his clothing perfectly, caressing him as they move over his body. Ciel finds those hands curiously hypnotic. He has disliked being handled by people ever since his parents were murdered and he was stolen by worshippers of the occult. But Sebastian has been dressing, undressing and bathing him from the time he was ten, and he is well accustomed to the touch of his devilishly clever hands. Physical contact with his butler has not only been acceptable to him for three years, but has in the last week offered something new in the form of both a strangely seductive appeal and a frisson of danger.

Ciel is on the verge of admitting to himself that he is out of his depth. He had some unwelcome exposure to these matters best understood by adults in his first and latest abductions, but he has so little scope and intensity of genuine experience that he is playing a game with several key pieces missing.

"I trust the servants are not destroying everything you have prepared?" he asks, choosing for now to deal with matters he can confidently handle instead of those he cannot.

"I have told them that they are not, upon threat of death, to touch anything," Sebastian murmurs as he pins a brooch onto Ciel's cravat, his unengaged, ungloved fingers gently stroking the smooth line of the boy's lower jaw.

"I'm sure you said as much on other important occasions, and that never stopped them from laying waste the food, the gardens and the furnishings," the earl says, trying not to think about how pleasing it feels to have those black-nailed fingertips tracing invisible lines along his skin.

"I believe that this time, I have convinced them that they _will_ die if they touch a single thing I have left in perfect condition," Sebastian states, finishing with the brooch.

He eases his master's arms through the blue jacket he has chosen for the day, not neglecting to let his cheek brush the boy's left ear as he bends down to straighten the collar.

Lady Midford and Elizabeth are expected for luncheon, and have been invited to stay for tea also. It is early in the day yet, but the earl never takes his Aunt Francis' visits lightly. He suspects, though, that she will be less critical than usual of the state of things in his manor, considering how grateful she was that he and his butler averted at least two tragic outcomes of the day on which she was last here.

They make their way downstairs, where Sebastian has prepared a breakfast of half-boiled eggs, plain toast, and folded crepes with an unusual filling of bacon and early-spring spinach sautéed in butter. Ciel eats appreciatively. It has been only a few days since he has returned to a regular diet instead of food meant for recuperation, and he is enjoying every bite.

But once the last of the delicious breakfast has been swallowed, he leaves the table and inspects all the rooms and gardens his aunt and cousin are likely to see. Everything is in order, with Baldroy, Mey-Rin and Finnian strictly engaged in the most mundane of tasks which are unlikely to cause disaster. Tanaka is in his steward's room, helping with the harmless job of folding the spare napkins into attractive shapes.

Ciel's final stop with Sebastian is the garden where his favourite sterling silver roses grow. The pale lavender flowers are blooming well although they are barely out of the winter season, no doubt thanks to Sebastian's otherworldly skills. They need much care, for they frequently require deadheading and the excision of woody portions affected by disease or pests. Finnian has been trained well enough by Sebastian to cope with most of the routine gardening – provided no one lets him loose with the pesticide can – but the butler always tends to the sterling silver rose garden personally.

"The roses look marvellous, considering the time of year," Ciel remarks with genuine admiration.

"They do indeed, my lord. As the sight of them pleases you, may I give you a gift from your own garden?"

"A gift from my own garden?" Ciel echoes curiously. "What kind of peculiar idea is that, Sebastian?"

"Grown in your garden it may be, but the plant is mine," the butler explains, walking Ciel to the end of the row of sterling silvers, and leading him behind it, where he has been nurturing a paler variety of the rose. "This is derived from the sterling silver, but crossed among individual plants selected for their paler-than-usual hue of lavender. The colour, as you see, is barely discernible to human eyes."

Sebastian selects the most beautiful rose on that single plant, snips it off with secateurs, trims off the thorns, and presents it to Ciel.

"Beautiful in form and shade, with a delicate scent," the earl murmurs in approval, lifting the flower to his nose.

"May I?" the butler asks when Ciel has admired the rose long enough. He slips the stem through the top buttonhole of the earl's blue jacket. The colour of the garment makes a perfect backdrop for the barely-there hints of lavender in the flawless petals.

"I suppose I should thank you for the gift, and I do," Ciel says, looking keenly up at him when he has positioned the rose perfectly. "Although I don't know what to make of it."

"It is simply a gift," Sebastian says, kneeling to adjust the signet ring on his master's right hand, which has turned towards the index finger, hiding the Phantomhive crest.

"Is anything _ever_ simple with you?" the earl demands to know. He slips his fingers out of Sebastian's much larger yet extremely elegant hands when the butler shows no sign that he will release his hold on him even several seconds after the face of the ring has been turned back into place.

"Everything can be both exquisitely simple and infinitely complex, depending on how one looks at it."

"Answer me simply, and don't lie to me, Sebastian: Why are you giving me this rose?"

"Because I want to."

"And why have you been... _touching_ me so much of late? You can't think that I haven't noticed."

"It is for the same reason that I have given you the rose."

Quite serendipitously, they have had the talk Ciel has been thinking of having. The answers he has received have been direct and simple, but they have not really answered anything at all.

***

"Ciel, how are you?" Aunt Francis asks warmly once she steps out of her carriage, doing something most unusual for her by bending down to look closely at her nephew's face, from which the welts and scratches have fortunately faded.

"I am very well, Aunt Francis. Thank you for your concern. I trust you are in good health also?"

"I am, thank you," she replies, giving him a smile that radiates genuine pleasure at seeing him again.

Any fear that Ciel feels of Lady Midford is purely that which arises from the discipline and high standards she expects of him and everyone. But it is a good kind of fear, not the suspicion he feels with those he distrusts. Aunt Francis hides nothing and is completely upright in character, unlike his other, ill-fated Aunt An. As he thinks briefly of Madam Red, he feels a pang of loss – for some reason, children frequently feel closer to their mothers' sisters than to their fathers' sisters – but he shuts the pain away, and turns his attention fully to the only one of his parents' siblings who remains in the world of the living.

"You look so very much better than when we last saw each other," Aunt Francis says, after studying his colour, looks and general bearing long enough to satisfy herself that he is not hiding any illness or severe injury from her. She says not a word about his long fringe, and can say nothing against Sebastian's hair, for the butler is keeping it flawlessly trimmed.

"So do you, Aunt Francis, and my cousin too."

Elizabeth has been hovering excitedly behind her mother because Lady Midford always reminds her to conduct herself as a lady should when she visits her cousin. She now steps forward to give Ciel a surprisingly gentle hug and a light kiss on the cheek. "Ciel, I'm so happy to see you looking well," she says softly, her green eyes shining in a face bright with joy.

"I am very pleased that you also have recovered fully," he replies formally, but with sufficient kindness in his voice to please her. "Shall we proceed to the dining room? Luncheon is almost ready to be served."

"That would be delightful," Aunt Francis tells him. "But before that, Elizabeth, isn't there something we wish to do first?"

"Oh, yes!" Lizzie exclaims, clapping her hands. "It's very important!"

She turns back to her mother's carriage and takes, from their footman, a parcel wrapped in hand-decorated gift paper and bound with a ribbon. Ciel wonders if she has bought him fancy outfits that she will demand he put on at once to please her, as she has done before... but the person to whom she presents the parcel is Sebastian.

"Sebastian," she begins in a manner that is both eager and bubbly while being a shade shy, for it is a painstakingly rehearsed speech she is making now. "Such a very small present as this is in no way at all adequate thanks for what you did for me that day, but I do hope you will accept it. It is from my mother and me, and I embroidered it myself."

"I am honoured that Lady Elizabeth and Lady Midford would think of giving a present to one such as myself," Sebastian responds in the most natural manner, although he is in truth surprised by the gesture.

"Open it, please do!" Lizzie cries, her excitement getting the better of her desire to be proper.

Sebastian undoes the ribbon and unwraps the paper, to find an exquisitely woven black wool scarf of the highest quality, with his initials in an elegant and sweeping calligrapher's font in one corner, beautifully satin-stitched in black silk thread.

"Do you like it?" Lizzie asks, green eyes as wide as they have ever been.

"I can honestly say that this is the finest black wool scarf that anyone on this earth has ever given me," the butler replies with sincerity. "I hardly deserve such a gift. Miss Elizabeth, the embroidery is flawless."

"I'm so pleased that you like it!" the girl exclaims as she takes another parcel from her mother's footman. "We have one for Ciel too, but in blue!"

Ciel receives his scarf from his fiancée and cousin, and admires it as a well-bred child ought to admire any gift, before he once again encourages his guests to step indoors with him and make their way to the dining room.

There, they settle down to an excellent early-spring lunch of poached Scottish salmon that needs only a touch of Sicilian lemons to bring out the naturally good flavour of the pink flesh; a deliciously warm, cooked salad of Mediterranean vegetables; and a crisp, chilled white wine. The earl and his aunt first speak briefly of Sophia Easton and her present incarceration to keep one another informed of what they know. They quickly move on to happier things, with Lizzie reporting that her maid and the coachman are improving by the day, then going on to tell Ciel about the spring balls that Lady Midford may allow her to attend.

"You never go to balls, Ciel," Lizzie says. "I wish you would. We would have such a wonderful time dancing together."

"I find such occasions pointless," the earl replies. He does not mention that he once attended a ball disguised as a girl to trap the Viscount of Druitt, and had to spend most of it either dancing in a manner that saw him pressed up uncomfortably close against Sebastian, or running away from Elizabeth, who would certainly have recognised his face had she seen him at close range.

"Balls may seem frivolous, but they are hardly pointless," Aunt Francis states, sparing a nod to Sebastian as he whisks away her side plate. "Many important contacts can be made during social occasions, and much information obtained. Even silly gossip can reveal vital facts. My father always said so, and your father and I learnt that it was indeed so as we grew up."

"I have other ways of making contacts and obtaining information – ways that require no dancing or music whatsoever," Ciel replies politely, but rather smugly.

"But dancing and music are so beautiful," Lizzie sighs. "How can you not like them? They bring so much joy into one's life."

"When you marry Elizabeth, I certainly hope that you will not leave my daughter to be escorted to balls by other gentlemen while you stay at home with your books," Aunt Francis smiles at him. "I would not be happy with that at all."

"Aunt Francis," Ciel gasps, his eyes widening in disbelief. "Marriage is a _very_ long way off for us."

"My dear nephew," Lady Francis states gently. "At the end of this year, you will turn fourteen. Elizabeth is fourteen already. Boys may be lawfully married at fourteen, and girls at twelve, so we can look forward to a wedding, perhaps, next year?"

"Aunt Francis!" Ciel protests.

"I am only teasing you and Elizabeth," the lady chuckles, glancing at her daughter, who is turning pinker than the salmon on her plate. "I was not married till I was twenty, thanks to the protectiveness of my father and my brother. I found twenty a very good age for a woman to become a wife, so of course I would not wish to subject my daughter and nephew to the demands of wedded life when you are both still children. Just because my great-great-great-great-grandmother Katherine was a mother at thirteen and a grandmother by twenty-nine, it does not mean that I wish Elizabeth to follow suit. I merely wish to remind you both that by the _law_ , you may be properly married as early as next year, and nothing would stand in your way."

"We shall be pleased to benefit from _your_ experience of twenty being a good age for a lady to marry," Ciel mumbles, with no small amount of relief. "Twenty is a long way off for us."

"It seems long only because you are both so young," says Lady Francis. "But it is a shorter time than you might think. Nevertheless, it does not matter exactly when you marry. You are my daughter's intended, and she is yours. You were meant for each other, and what was meant to be will come to pass."

"What was meant to be," Ciel repeats thoughtfully.

He is thinking of how Sebastian specified that their new contract should last five years. It will end (in death? in a parting of the ways?) by the time he is eighteen. If he survives, then by twenty or so, he is very likely to become Lizzie's husband. How strange the idea is to him. It all seems a very long way off – marriage, death and farewells.

He casts what he thinks will be no more than a second's casual glance at the butler here, only to have it turn into a long, surprised stare. For Sebastian is gazing keenly at him, his garnet orbs searching him so piercingly that he almost seems to be seeking, in his uncovered blue eye, a window into the distances of eternity. What the devil sees there he does not know, but it is either most pleasing or most disconcerting to him, for he does not look away at all until Lady Francis asks them what the matter is.

"I beg your pardon, Lady Francis," Sebastian answers without missing a beat, tearing himself away from his master's face. "I thought I saw that His Lordship was troubled by a speck in his eye, and I was considering how best to remove it. But as he does not appear to be in any discomfort now, I realise that I must have been mistaken."

Sebastian removes a few more unneeded items of crockery and cutlery from the table before bowing to his master and his guests and retreating to the kitchen, where Ciel's eyes, covered or uncovered, cannot follow him.


	17. Compromise

Ciel finds the game intriguing, but too subtle for his adolescent impatience. _We could go on like this forever,_ he thinks. _Forever means nothing to Sebastian, but I don't have as many years as he does._

At nightfall, he gathers the few game pieces he has, puts all subtlety aside, and asks that the latest move be plainly explained to him.

"What was that about?" he asks, when he and Sebastian are alone in his room, getting him ready for bed.

"What do you refer to, Young Master?" is the butler's response after pouring the hot water into the tub.

"Don't play the fool," Ciel snaps. "What else could I mean but the look you gave me at lunch?"

"Well, I was struck by how you seemed less averse to the idea of marrying Miss Elizabeth than you used to," he answers, removing his master's jacket and slipping the slightly wilted rose out of the buttonhole. He rests the flower on the nightstand before stripping off his gloves to tackle the rest of Ciel's garments.

"I could hardly say to her mother's face that I never asked for this betrothal, could I?" the boy growls. "We're talking about Aunt Francis. Besides, it would have made Lizzie cry."

"Proceeding with an arranged marriage purely to avoid upsetting your relatives seems foolish."

"It wouldn't purely be for such superficial reasons. I have nothing against Lizzie – she's no worse than any other my parents might have accepted as my future wife."

"It does not matter to you that you will not choose your own wife? Will you really see this engagement through?"

"Of course I will!" Ciel declares. But abruptly, he falls silent for some time, before murmuring: "Although somewhere in my mind... I'd assumed that as Lizzie grew older, she would meet some man at a ball who would love her better than I could, fall in love with him, and break off our engagement."

"That is improbable," Sebastian tells him. "Lady Elizabeth loves you deeply. She is a child, but she has a steadfast heart. Her feelings are unlikely to change."

"What does it matter to you, anyway?" the earl asks. "By the time I marry, you'll be gone. If our contract draws to a natural close, and if I don't demand that you kill me, you'll be off and I'll be here getting on with life as an adult. I won't be as efficient without you, but I'll have my own informants and associates, like my father did. And if without you I should come to an untimely end at the hands of enemies, so be it. I'll probably deserve no better by then."

"Is that really what you want?" Sebastian asks.

"Isn't that what you will prepare me for in the five years you wanted?" the earl asks. A tingle runs through him as one of Sebastian's fingertips trails down the back of his upper arm as he removes his shirt.

"I said that if at the end of five years you decided no longer to associate with me, I would disappear from your life. But if you do not say the word, I might not go away."

Ciel stares. "Why would you want to remain? Isn't it dull and demeaning to a devil to be in a contract?"

"We would not necessarily have to be in a contract by then," Sebastian remarks, unfastening the boy's shorts.

"Don't be absurd. Why would I have you around if we had no contract? Wouldn't that be akin to keeping a wild beast loose in one's house?"

"Possibly. But I thought that was the sort of challenge Lord Phantomhive would be up for," the butler says, eyeing his master, who by now is almost entirely undressed except for his eye-patch, drawers, stockings and shoes.

Sebastian reaches up, slips the black silk off the boy's face, and looks into his eyes. He brushes a feather-light caress against his smooth cheek with the backs of his fingers, and says in a tone that the earl finds both soothing and menacing: "I gave you that look earlier because it pleases me to see myself reflected in these eyes. I wonder what they will show when you are grown, and if there will be room for my reflection."

Ciel seizes Sebastian's fingers and presses the devil's hand down, away from his cheek. "Do not make me hit you again," he warns. "Must I issue a command?"

"Would you really wish to do that?" the butler asks.

The earl is aware that his next words will determine whether the game continues. If he ends it, something will wane; if he continues it, something may grow, but until it slowly develops, he will be adrift in a sea of subtleties whose currents may take him years to grasp. He snatches impulsively at a decision: "What I wish is immaterial. If something must be done, it must be done."

"Is that your final word on the matter?"

"Yes."

With that word, something crumbles. The subtle wooing has been rebuffed, leaving no space for growth.

"It is time for your bath, my lord," Sebastian states, drawing back from Ciel and efficiently removing his stockings and shoes before wrapping a robe about him. He makes no further unnecessary contact with him, as if nothing out of the ordinary had ever transpired between them.

***

"Soma says His Royal Highness has invited him and Agni to also accompany him to Paris and Biarritz, after they leave Denmark," Ciel murmurs two days later, glancing through the sheets of fine writing paper in a beautiful envelope, delivered to the manor by hand a few minutes ago. "He is impressed by the severe beauty of the Danish landscapes of early spring, and has drawn us a picture."

The earl holds out to Sebastian a painfully childish pencil illustration of a lake, bare trees and hills that could represent any part of the world. It is nearly as bad as the portrait Soma once drew of Mina when he sought the servant girl he believed had cared for him.

Sebastian makes no comment about the sketch before returning it to his master. He only says: "As we do not expect Prince Soma and Mister Agni in England this week, I shall put their bed linen back into the cupboard."

"Perhaps they will like France better than England, and not trouble me with a reappearance," Ciel remarks hopefully, putting Soma's letter away and turning back to the other papers on his desk.

Sebastian says nothing, only reaches out to refill the earl's teacup.

"See to it that these letters are sent," the earl says, picking up four sealed envelopes and handing them to the butler.

"Yes, Young Master."

Thus dismissed, Sebastian leaves the study. Ciel looks up at the closed door and the empty room. He is very conscious of Sebastian's reticence, and more than aware of how the little touches he received for a week have stopped. The butler has kept a most respectful distance these two days.

It perturbs Ciel. He asks himself if he misses the caresses, but stamps out the idea at once as absurd. As long as his demon-hound carries out his duties well, it does not matter how communicative he is, or how he avoids lingering unnecessarily in his presence. It is not worth any more attention than he has already given it.

He thinks thus until after tea time, when Sebastian approaches him in the conservatory with a most unexpected request:

"May I be excused for the evening, Young Master? I shall prepare your dinner before I leave, and instruct Tanaka how to serve it to you. I will return in time for your bath before bedtime."

Ciel looks at him curiously. Sebastian has never before asked for so much as a minute off. He will not refuse, for their new contract gives the devil the freedom of movement that the old pact denied him. His asking permission at all is the pure courtesy of keeping his master informed, rather than an inability to step away without authorisation. Still, the earl is interested enough to inquire: "What do you need to do this evening?"

"Things I would prefer my master to know nothing of."

"Devilish things, I suppose," Ciel remarks carelessly.

"You could say so, Young Master."

"I've said before that as long as you do not damage the Phantomhive reputation, you may do as you please."

"Of course, my lord. No one who sees me will know that I am a Phantomhive butler."

"Fine."

Sebastian bows, shooting Ciel a glance as he leaves that gives the earl a bit of a turn, for his garnet eyes are like those of hungry animals waiting to pounce. Perhaps he would rather not know what his butler is up to tonight, but he may have been mistaken in dismissing the devil's taciturn behaviour as none of his concern.

***

Sebastian, wearing a black top hat and black overcoat buttoned over excellently made black clothing entirely unmarked by the Phantomhive crest, reaches London barely fifteen minutes after leaving the manor. He heads at once for the Whitechapel district, for he intimately memorised its narrow lanes and rhythms of life and death while solving the Ripper murders with his master.

His dress and bearing, and his scrutiny of the women who stand against the walls of shabby buildings and smile, mark him as a gentleman prowling the streets for certain services. Everyone here was nervous while the Ripper reigned, but all has been quiet for four months, and the word on the street is that the terrible murderer is gone – although the police will say little, because someone important was involved in a bad way, or so the rumours go.

With that weight off, confidence and boldness have space to bloom, and the women who charge for the services they render are eyeing Sebastian brazenly or coyly, putting forth whatever they think will most appeal to a potential customer.

The devil glances at everything on offer. He neither likes nor dislikes, respects nor disrespects these women – they are human beings like all others, doing what they can to survive, in the way they best know how. Many of them are even more tolerable to him than people who fancy themselves better than their fellow mortals, but are no kinder than devils in the way they destroy others' lives.

He passes over numerous women along two lanes, seeking something specific. Halfway down the third lane, he finds it. She is perfectly unremarkable, in no way at all more attractive than most of the others, but she has the look he wants. He gathers that she is about twenty years of age, though a lifetime of poor nourishment has left her very small in stature, and thin. Her hair is long – not ideal, but remediable with the items he has brought. What is important is that those tresses are very black, and her complexion very pale. Her teeth are in a terrible state, but that doesn't matter; he does not have to look at them. The colour of her eyes too is of little import – he does not plan to spend time looking into them. It is merely a bonus that they happen to be blue.

"You'll do," he tells her.

"Where, sir?"

"Your room."

She probably shares a cramped, rented room with other women, but they are likely to all be out plying their trade on the streets. If they are not, money, which he has in abundance – for he almost never uses his butler's wages – will vacate the room for them, for as long as he requires.

The woman leads him up the lane to her quarters, which are as he has expected them to be, having entered at least one such room during his investigations of the Ripper cases. She appears to be the lone tenant.

"Lock the door," he tells her. "We are not to be interrupted."

"O' course, sir," she says, and does as told.

He takes out his purse and throws onto the bed what he knows, to her, is a staggering amount of money. "That is all yours if you do exactly as I want."

Her eyes light up at sight of the money, but she also looks wary, no doubt a hangover from the Ripper incidents.

"I am unarmed, and I have no intention of harming you," he states briskly. "Have no fear of that. I am paying you that much only because I have very specific requirements."

Her need for money overcomes her caution, and she immediately gathers up the generous number of large, fat coins, puts them aside on a table which has one leg propped up by an ancient cigar tin, and says winningly to him: "Anythin' you want, sir."

"Take everything off," he orders.

She obeys with alacrity, and in a minute, is standing completely nude before him.

"Put up your hair."

She grabs some pins from the same table the money is on, and piles her hair on top of her head. From one of his coat pockets, Sebastian takes out a cap – the cap his master wore on the night the two people who were the Ripper killed their final victim – and hands it to her.

"Put that on," he says.

She does so at once. He is pleased to see that it fits her perfectly – she really is very small. Merely by glancing over her figure, he already knows that the next item he will hand to her will fit also. He removes, from under his coat, Ciel's blue jacket. It was waiting to be cleaned when he removed it from the laundry room. Its threads are imbued with his master's scent, and will cover the woman's scent to some extent.

"From now until I leave, you are not to speak one word," Sebastian tells the prostitute as he hands her his master's jacket, indicating with a nod that she should put it on.

She sees as she dons it that it is a boy's garment, and it is obvious too that the cap on her head is a boy's cap. From that, she already has a pretty good idea what this customer wants, and is therefore not surprised when he orders her to lie face-down on the bed.

Sebastian removes his own clothing and drapes it neatly over a rickety chair he would not trust to hold his weight. He is pleased, when he stands beside the bed, to see that the woman is so slender that she barely has any hips to speak of, but is young enough to have a pert little bottom. Good.

"Not a word from you," he whispers a reminder, as he climbs onto the bed and mounts her.

She nods obediently, and takes it as quietly as she can when he produces a small jar of oil, lubricates his fingers, and inserts them into her nether hole – not the orifice most gentlemen are seeking when they buy her services, but she will shut up if the money is hers to keep. Besides, it is decent of him to prepare that thoroughfare somewhat – some of the other gentlemen who've used it haven't been as patient. And perhaps she can consider him decent enough, too, to be paying a grown woman to do the deed instead of more cheaply buying one of those poor street boys, who are much too young to be up to this sort of thing.

When he considers her stretched enough, he presses his body against hers, and slowly pushes his length into her, a little at first, then more, and finally all of him. She gasps and turns her head to one side. He takes hold of her head and turns her face into the mattress again, for he does not wish to see her features.

"Keep your face down," he grunts. "You may cry out if you must, but not too loudly, and no words from you."

She gasps once more as he thrusts deep into her, but remembers to keep her face forward, so that he will see nothing more than the back of her cap-covered head. She has already sussed that he wants her to be someone he cannot have, and that a view of her face will spoil the fantasy for him.

He is not particularly gentle, and she does cry out a few times when his thrusts grow harder. But he is not violent either, and she can cope. He is very tall. If he stretches out, his head will be well forward of hers, but he mostly keeps his upper body off her – she senses he is staring down at her capped and jacketed back – and once or twice, he hunches over to bury his face in the jacket. He is breathing harder now, but it is a strange kind of panting. Having had customers aplenty over the years, she can tell the kind of panting that comes with exertion apart from that which comes with excitement, but his breathing has no exertion in it, only a peculiar sort of excitement.

Soon, she scarcely notices his breathing, for he is driving so hard and fast into her that she is caught up in the act, crying out over and over again – she cannot exactly call it pleasure, but her nether orifice does produce interesting sensations of its own when thus used, and the friction and speed of his thrusts is producing those somewhat pleasing feelings perfectly.

He is panting into the jacket now in that strangely strained yet effortless way, and above her cries of mingled pleasure and pain, she thinks she hears him gasp into the fabric covering her back as he comes inside of her: "Young master...", although she cannot be certain, for his voice is muffled by the jacket.

He spends his hot seed inside her body, where at least she knows it will do no damage to her livelihood, for babies do not pop out of one's backside, thank goodness. He breathes once, twice, into the jacket, then the game is over for him, for he pulls out of her, wipes himself clean with a handkerchief from his own coat, and swiftly dons the garments he had draped over the chair earlier.

"Return those items to me," he tells her, not looking at her.

She removes the cap and jacket and hands them back to him. He takes them from her, puts them back inside his overcoat, pulls on his hat, and leaves an additional sum of money on the table before he unlocks her door, walks out of her room, and closes the door after him.

She has no idea if she will ever see him again, but the extremely generous sum and tip he has paid her will tide her very well over lean times when customers are few.

***

Sophia Easton looks forward to nightfall. Her cell is miserably cold, and sometimes damp by night. But at least she is left to herself on her simple bed and thin but fortunately flealess blanket. If this were the Newgate Prison of the years before Queen Victoria's reign, she would be crammed into a filthy common room with two hundred other unwashed women and their diseased children all seeking sleeping space on the bare floor.

But because times have changed, prisoners now have their own cells. Besides, Newgate Prison has in recent years held only those awaiting trial, and those awaiting execution. She does not think this a typical place filled with the usual criminals, but it may be her rank and wealth that have given her this fairly quiet cell. In the day, she is obliged to step out to wash and eat her meals, but is discouraged from speaking to anyone – for prisoners are meant to spend their time reflecting quietly on their sins.

That suits her. She desires no conversation. She desires nothing other than to end her days. But the jailers are watchful, checking now and again to see that she has not hanged herself with strips of cloth torn from the hem of her dress, or dashed her brains out against the wall. By night, at least, she can lie down and be left alone, with only the wardens passing in silence.

As she stares up at the ceiling tonight, she senses a change in the air beyond her cell, but does not care to turn her head. It is probably just a warden in the corridor. Soon, however, the atmosphere about her grows dense, and darker than usual. The space she is in feels as if it has mysteriously been separated from the rest of the prison, without anything having physically moved. The prison bars seem to shift in that same strange way of being separated from the wall without moving, and suddenly, someone is inside her cell.

It is a tall man with dark hair and a blank expression on his face. He carries no lamp, but is somehow illuminating the place with a glow nestling in the palm of his upturned hand.

"Who are you?" she demands, sitting up, refusing to show how startled she is by his unexpected appearance. He looks vaguely familiar.

The man does not answer, but someone standing behind him does, with a quiet: "Good evening, Mrs Easton."

That is when she realises that there are two men in her cell. The tall one steps aside to let the shorter man behind him approach her.

"How long has it been since our last meeting in Potsdam? Thirty years?" the second man asks, standing before her and looking down at her where she sits at the edge of her bed. "You were Miss Sophia Bourchier then, young, rich and proud, visiting the Continent with your mother and your fiancé. Look at the state of you now."

She stares at his beautiful features and his silver hair. It is like seeing a ghost from her past – a ghost whose appearance has not altered one iota despite the passage of three long decades.

"Percival Ambrose?" she whispers in disbelief. "How did you–"

"How did I get into your cell? How have I retained my youth? Are those the questions you wish to ask? Do the answers matter? All that matters is that I have been watching you on occasion through the years because poor Susan – God have mercy on her soul – took such an interest in you."

"Susan... Rothstein?" Mrs Easton asks.

"Susan Eliot, Susan Rothstein, Susanne Grafin von Rothstein, Lady Susan, whatever people called her over the years – yes, that Susan."

"She was no 'Lady Susan'," Mrs Easton finds enough haughtiness amid her surprise to scoff. "Her father was untitled. Only her marriage to her German count made her Grafin von Rothstein, or at best, Lady Rothstein. She became known in England as Lady Susan only because the people she knew here were never sure how to deal with her German title."

Percival Ambrose chuckles. "Ah, your frankness and pride were among her reasons for admiring you. You reminded her of her when she was twenty, she said. And she _loved_ how your initials after marriage became the same as her maiden initials – S.E. – initials always took her fancy. She's dead now, but I watched you whenever I could, because I knew you would be trouble, just as she turned out to be. When she parted from me after her husband's death, I knew she was up to evil. I tracked her from Potsdam to Dresden, and St Petersburg to Paris to Amsterdam, and finally to London. I believe she would have made contact with you eventually, had she not been killed."

"What are you babbling about?" Mrs Easton asks impatiently.

"Suffice to say that when you met us in Potsdam some thirty years ago, I had already been enlightened by certain experiences in England, which drove me to spend the next few decades attempting to convince poor Susan that I had erred, and taught her wrong. I hoped to change her ways. But her husband died of old age, leaving her a widow who never looked older than twenty, and she disappeared from my life. The great-grandson of the man to whom I owed a debt put an end to her and her monster only a few weeks ago, leaving me free to turn my attention to you."

"What _do_ you want? If you aren't here to break me out of prison, you had better leave. I don't care for your weirdly unchanged looks or your pointless tales of Susan Rothstein. We met in Europe a long time ago. That is of no relevance now."

"Oh, it is of the greatest relevance. Susan asked me to watch you whenever I was in England, and wanted me to promise that I would never thwart you, for she expected great things of you. I objected, for what if there were things I did that might indirectly go against you? She laughed gaily and agreed then that I could promise never to _directly_ oppose you. So when you attempted to murder Ciel Phantomhive, I did nothing directly. I owed a debt to the boy's great-grandfather, Charles Phantomhive, and could not sit by while you killed his great-granddaughter and great-grandson. I thus intervened _indirectly_ by having my servant here suggest to the Phantomhive butler where the girl might be. Her life was saved just in time, leaving the boy's remarkable butler free to go to his master."

"Bastard," Mrs Easton snarls. "So I have you to thank for that. Your manservant... I remember now – he was with you in Europe too, all those years ago. I thought he looked familiar. His appearance has not changed a whit, like yours."

"Susan did hint that she could teach you things to preserve your youth, but you were never interested. You only cared for having children and giving them what you could in your lifetime."

"That has not changed, so keep your devilry to yourself. The children I had are doomed to die – nothing less than a sentence of death will be passed on them for treason and murder, so there is no purpose in my living now. As I said, if you are not here to free me to save them, leave."

"I cannot free you," Ambrose smiles. "You would only attack Charles Phantomhive's great-grandchildren again. I won't leave you to serve out your sentence either, for the way our justice system is these days, charges of kidnapping and attempted murder may well see you out of prison in less than two years. I cannot allow that."

"So you're here to kill me?" she asks calmly. "That is just as well. Do it."

"I am not here to kill you. I won't murder someone Susan was fond of. What I will do is offer you the opportunity of ending your life on your _own_ terms, in a blaze of infamy, if you like. How about it?"

"What precisely do you mean?" she asks.

"Let me explain."

***

"What were you doing with that?" Ciel asks coldly.

The boy is standing in the doorway of the laundry room, catching Sebastian in the act of returning his blue jacket to the neat stacks of clothing waiting to be cleaned. The devil is genuinely surprised, for he had not known the earl was there. How had that happened? A week ago, he had not seen the slap coming either.

The truth will be awkward, but he has never lied to Ciel – except by omission – and does not plan to start now, so he answers frankly: "I used it to cover the scent of another human with yours."

"Explain."

"Young Master, I believe you would rather not know the details."

"Even if I would rather not know, I choose to know. Answer me truthfully."

"Are you sure–"

"Answer me!"

"I hired a prostitute and had her wear your jacket while I used her, from the rear, so that I could pretend it was you underneath me."

"You piece of filth..." Ciel growls, blue eye blazing. "You disgust me."

The boy is furious, hurting, repulsed, as he bites out: "You _knew_ what I went through at... at the mill – you _knew_ – and you still chose to violate me in your mind, and to treat me with such disrespect as to engage a _prostitute_ –"

Sebastian knows he is sinking himself deeper into the quicksand of his master's rage, but his own anger at having his restraint, consideration and subtle courtship unappreciated perversely impels him to correct the boy, saying matter-of-factly: "No, Young Master. I treated you with the _greatest_ respect by paying someone else to be you, instead of seizing you by the nape of your neck and using you as I could have when you were at my mercy."

"Vermin."

"Quite right."

"The very sight and thought of you make me sick."

"Understood."

"I never want you to touch me again."

"If that is your wish, I shall engage a valet to attend to your dressing and baths, or train Tanaka."

Sebastian observes with interest that Ciel seems to be regressing before his eyes. He has always behaved older than his years, but he seems now to shrink in on himself in his raw anger, plunging well past even his chronological age to something very much younger. It occurs to the butler that this is the closest his master has ever come to throwing a truly childish tantrum since they met. Small children can be vastly more vicious in their anger than adults can, and as the devil wonders what is coming, Ciel bites out: "You really _hated_ it when Agni held me, didn't you? Fine."

He stomps down the below-stairs passageways towards the servants' quarters, and Sebastian follows several feet behind, knowing he will not like whatever happens. The earl strides up to the small rooms which house the chef, gardener and housemaid, and pounds on Baldroy's door.

"What is it?" the chef mumbles tiredly.

"Baldroy!" Ciel yells.

"Shit," comes the panicked remark from within the room, and the door quickly opens to reveal the chef in a sleeveless vest, light cotton trousers, and little else. "Why are you below stairs, Your Lordship?" he asks, glancing from the earl before him to the butler a few feet away.

"I feel sick," Ciel states. "Carry me back to my room, and prepare my bath."

Utterly baffled, Baldroy asks: "Wouldn't Mister Sebastian do that a lot better than me?"

"Sebastian is otherwise engaged, with a host of filthy matters," the earl says, throwing a backward glare at the butler.

"Hellfire and damnation," the chef mutters under his breath, as he rapidly twigs that he is a pawn caught in the middle of a power play between the earl and the butler. But an order from His Lordship is not to be ignored, so he picks the boy up, eyeing Sebastian cautiously, for he sees how the cold anger in those mysterious red eyes only grows when the boy twines his arms around his neck.

"Let's get you upstairs, Your Lordship," he sighs, moving towards the stairs.

Sebastian glowers, his possessiveness rising as Ciel presses his face into Baldroy's uncovered neck and throws a furious, deep-blue stare at him from beneath the man's chin.

***

He had not known the boy was there. Neither had he seen the slap coming a week ago. Sebastian ponders this within his own humble bedroom, a below-stairs space with only one long, high, narrow and unopenable pane of glass he selected to be opaque when he rebuilt the manor. No one can reach the window from outside without a ladder, and if they do, they cannot look through it.

Tonight, after the confrontation with Ciel, his favourite black cat greeted him in the winter-rose garden with the present of a dead finch. She must have seized the creature from the bushes it was asleep in. Sebastian has permitted her to bear her prize indoors and deposit the feathered corpse at his feet. He picks up her gift reverently, examines the delicate, broken neck and spine, and places it back on the floor at her paws.

"Thank you for the gift," he says, gazing into her wonderful amber eyes. "I give it to you in return as your supper."

She has no interest in actually eating the bird, however. So he offers her the minced meat he is giving the other cats he has brought indoors out of the rain. She accepts. He picks up the dead finch and contemplates the pathetically small mound of feathers in the palm of his hand.

"Will you not eat it, my beauty?" he asks the black cat once more, holding the bird out to her. She is uninterested. He caresses her, and takes the bird outside to the sterling-silver rose garden.

A waste of a life. However, he understands the casual cruelty of cats. They sometimes kill because they can, not because they must, and the gifts they offer may go unappreciated.

Devils are not much different.

But as he buries the finch under the roses so that its body may return to the earth and nourish other life, it occurs to him that he has been undevilish of late, and his impulses have led him to be ridiculously untrue to himself. He has spared his meal; turned his prey into a pet; given that pet reason to continue living by telling it he would groom it to its fullest potential; allowed himself to become quite possessive of it for no reason whatsoever; carnally desired it when that same absurd possessiveness seeded the idea in him that he had been done out of claiming what little remained of the child's innocence; stupidly attempted to woo the boy like a suitor; and finally degraded his devilish senses by releasing his frustrations in the kind of sexual charade with a whore that only mortals would deceive themselves with.

Impulsive fool.

When he finishes burying the bird and pats the wet earth over its corpse, however, he stares out into the cold night, sees a million things that he could torment and triumph over, and finds no interest in any of them. He washes his filthy hands in a pail of rainwater near the trellis, then looks up at the manor which shields the fragile form of Ciel Phantomhive, and knows that this is where he chooses to be, regardless of what the boy may think of him.

He leaves the roses and the dead finch, and returns to the shelter of his master's house.


	18. Sacrifice

"Young Master, wake up."

Ciel stirs, hearing the voice and seeing the first hints of morning light stealing into his room. He is too disoriented for a moment to remember why he feels surprised that his butler is in his presence, and several seconds pass before he recalls the events of last night. Before he can order Sebastian out of the room in anger, however, the devil speaks.

"I know that you do not want to see me, but something has happened. We must go to London at once."

"What?"

"The Commissioner telephoned the manor a minute ago. Mrs Easton has escaped from Newgate Prison, and somehow entered the Tower of London where her sons are held. She is in her eldest son's room as we speak, accompanied by two men, one of whom is holding off all the guards. The other man is said to have shoulder-length, silver hair."

"Damn it!" Ciel snaps, jumping out of bed and stumbling into the bathroom to relieve himself before returning to the bedroom and cooperating fully with Sebastian as he swiftly cleans his teeth and face and dresses him.

"There is no time for breakfast, but I have bread rolls ready, filled with thin slices of cured meat and shredded greens, that you can eat in the carriage."

"We shouldn't take the carriage – bear me there at once," Ciel tells him icily, ready to add a barb that he had better keep his gloves on.

But Sebastian says: "The Commissioner knows you are at the manor. You will not be able to account for your appearing at the Tower within minutes. Nothing will change until you get there."

"Why do you say that?"

"She has asked to see you."

"Bloody hell," Ciel mutters. He runs downstairs, sees that Finny has prepared the carriage, and climbs in. Sebastian deposits the bread basket in his master's lap and jumps into the box seat. There is nothing for Ciel to do but bear with the ride, and eat. And think about last night.

He had asked Mey-Rin for his blue jacket after Sebastian left the manor, because he thought he'd left in one of its pockets a note from the managers of the new restaurant being set up to sell the curry bread and other curry dishes. Mey-Rin had gone to the laundry room and returned to report how odd it was that she had only just seen the blue jacket folded neatly at the top of one of the stacks of the earl's clothing – but it was now gone.

Ciel had told her to forget it, but immediately concluded that the jacket's disappearance had something to do with Sebastian's night off. He had waited near the laundry room after his dinner, thinking that Sebastian would surely sense his presence there upon his return – after all, the nature of a contract with a devil is such that the devil knows where its master is at all times. But Sebastian had seemed unaware that he was there as he returned the jacket to the room.

He had been absolutely furious when he got his answers. He had felt betrayed, insulted and disgusted – and reacted like a toddler throwing a fit. As Sebastian's master, he could have commanded him to do any number of things as penance for the offence, or terminated the contract. Instead, he had ranted and retaliated childishly. He is still not certain why he behaved thus, but suspects that it was a fearful animal response to this aspect of the adult world he was not ready to tackle – just like he had all but panicked when Aunt Francis had reminded him that he could legally marry by the age of fourteen.

Upstairs, Baldroy had wisely refrained from asking what had happened between him and the butler. He had done his job competently enough, considering it was his first time as valet, but in his hands, Ciel had genuinely felt like a small child. Baldroy had undressed him, bathed him, and put his nightshirt on him, then tucked him in the way Ciel imagined any commoner without servants would somewhat awkwardly get his own son ready for bed at times when his wife was ill. It was done carefully, even affectionately, but with none of the sense of deep personal interest that Sebastian always had in him – as a meal-in-the-making during their first contract, then as something else, something different, under the new covenant.

It has been that sense of being something else to Sebastian that has intrigued and repelled Ciel, culminating in the painfully immature confrontation of last night. He does not yet know what he will do about his demon, but that must be put aside for now, while he deals with Mrs Easton and Percival Ambrose.

***

The Tower of London housed no prisoners for decades before admitting the Easton brothers nearly three weeks ago. In recent years, it has even become a place of interest visited by ordinary citizens and guests from abroad seeking a taste of the great events of history its walls have seen, and the famous prisoners it held centuries before.

However, Lord Randall had deemed the Tower the best place to hold offenders charged with treason, to prevent them from communicating with ordinary prisoners and wardens. Therefore, the Easton brothers were brought here after their arrest with the Prince of Wales' authorisation. Despite the Tower's association with prisoners of royal or aristocratic blood, the scullery maid and newspaper reporter in league with the brothers are secured here too, also to separate them from other common prisoners.

Although the four inmates have been living in fear of what awaits them in court, they have been treated well, properly fed, and made as comfortable as the circumstances allow. They have not been permitted to speak with one another, or see anyone but the yeoman warders and high-ranking officers from Scotland Yard, but their accommodation is better than Mrs Easton's tiny cell in Newgate Prison, each with his or her own fairly spacious room. And despite talk of the Bloody Tower being haunted by royal ghosts, the prisoners have encountered nothing otherworldly, and the security and daily routines have calmed them, leaving them quietly preparing to face the law for their crimes.

They were certainly calm until the earliest hours of this morning, when something astonishing happened before dawn. Shouts and cries rang out beyond their locked rooms, and sounds suggestive of people being thrown aside and hurled down stairs reached their ears. Those whose rooms were at the tops of narrow, winding staircases soon found their doors unlocked by a tall man, whose features were largely obscured by a strip of dark fabric wrapped about his lower face and a hat drawn down to his eyebrows. One after the other, they were taken down those winding staircases and up others, until everyone was herded together into George Easton's lamp-lit quarters, where a silver-haired man was waiting.

Then Sophia Easton walked in, dressed finely in her favourite green gown, her most fashionable hat on her coiffed blonde hair. She strode up to her sons and slapped each of them hard across the face, saying bitterly: "Fools. Worthless fools. All this is owing to your stupidity. It ends here, and the fault is entirely yours."

"Mother!" Robert Easton had gasped. "Are you here to save us?"

Mrs Easton, turning a cold, pale-blue eye on him, then on George, had replied bitterly: " _Save_ you? How did I ever bear such idiots in my womb? I haven't come to save you. I've come here to die."

***

Ciel and Sebastian are met by Lord Randall's men and the warders when they reach the drawbridge of the fortress. They are quickly escorted through the Middle and Byward Towers, and down Water Lane towards the Bloody Tower, where the people they seek are gathered.

"Where are they?" Ciel asks when he spies Lord Randall on the Green.

"In George Easton's room," reports the Commissioner, as he gestures to some of his men to wait in the courtyard and others to accompany them into the Bloody Tower. "The warders told us that what felt like a gust of wind was followed by doors being unlocked and flung open. Mrs Easton suddenly appeared inside the Bloody Tower in the company of a silver-haired young man, and a taller man whose features were obscured by a hat and scarf. Guards were thrown aside, and the prisoners removed from their rooms. No one has been able to bring down the taller man, who cannot be felled even by bullets."

Ciel glances at Sebastian. He and his butler know that the impassable person is the devil called Carsten. As they hurry up the stairs leading to the room where the prisoners and their uninvited guests are, Ciel asks Sebastian under his breath: "Can you get past him?"

Sebastian feels the thickness of the atmosphere they are entering, and replies quietly: "He has erected a spiritual shield as strong to demons as any of the Tower walls would be to a human being. Without his permission, it will be impassable by me."

"Damn it."

Lord Randall is now calling out to the figure at the top of the stairs: "The Earl of Phantomhive has arrived. Mrs Easton said she wished to see him."

The dark, face-covered figure nods, and moves backwards. The space at the top of the stairs that no one could get past now opens into a short passageway which admits Ciel, Sebastian, Lord Randall, two of the Commissioner's men, and four of the yeoman warders. The tall, fabric-masked individual has stepped into George Easton's rather large room, with its doorway which is wider than the narrower doors common to the other rooms.

"Good morning to all of you. Don't think that just because we've moved back a little, that you can enter as you please," comes a man's amused voice from within the room. "You will find the doorway as impassable as the stairs before."

The silver-haired man is the speaker. It is the first time Ciel, Sebastian, and even Lord Randall have set eyes on him, for the Commissioner had not been able to reach the top of the stairs earlier. He looks no older than twenty-five, has a beautiful face, and cuts a striking figure in a silvery-grey coat over a spotlessly white waistcoat, shirt and trousers.

Mrs Easton stands two feet behind him. The Easton brothers, the scullery maid and the reporter are huddled against the far wall, looking as uncertain of what is going on as the others outside the room.

"How delightful to meet all of you at last," says the man. "My name is Percival Ambrose. I am happy to tell it to you, and to show you my face, as I doubt I will live much longer. I have decided, however, that my manservant ought to cover his features as he will outlive me, and I would like him to be of use to society, unhindered, after I depart this world."

"Why are you here? What do you want?" Lord Randall asks angrily.

"I am here to see _true_ justice done, Commissioner," Ambrose replies. "Do you think that Mrs Easton will pay fully for her crimes if she is tried at the Old Bailey? I doubt so. I suspect that she will get off with a measly term of imprisonment, after which she will be free to dig up the vast wealth that the Crown cannot confiscate from her estate because it does not know she owns it, round up her thugs, and kidnap children again."

"What would be true justice to you?" Randall snarls.

"Death, of course. I could have broken her stubborn neck in her cell, but unfortunately, she and I are former associates, and one of my protégés was a great admirer of hers. Therefore, I owe her the courtesy of letting her dress up grandly before her final act, decide for herself how she should die, and what ought to happen to the sons she spawned. So here we are."

Ciel had thought that he never wanted to look at Mrs Easton again after what happened at the mill, but finds now that he has no feelings of distaste towards her, because she looks like a proud, wild creature caged by her silver-haired handler. To his surprise, he feels sorry for her.

"Mrs Easton," Ciel speaks. "Why did you ask to see me?"

She comes forward, eyes him coldly, and says: "I didn't ask to see you. I never wanted to set eyes on you again. It was Ambrose who insisted that I ask for you, to apologise for what I did to you and the girl. But I refused. I won't apologise. It was only right to repay like for like, after you condemned my sons by the part you played in their exposure. So Ambrose and I agreed that I should see you, at the very least, to tell you who your friends and foes are."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that he wants me to tell you who was ready to assist me in harming you, and who was not, so you will know who is on your side. I am therefore telling you that I consulted various groups and individuals before abducting Lady Elizabeth and taking you from your manor. The Ferro family was willing to help me, but they have lost their power. Other gangs on the Continent did not know enough about you, although they are no friends of yours. Lau has disappeared. The Undertaker refused to help. The society gossips who told me of the girl's betrothal to you did not know what I intended. And the magical practitioners I approached to breach your manor's defences were of little use, but one of them, a man with red hair, was the one who advised me to drown you in a cage. That is all."

Ciel is still absorbing the information when Ambrose speaks: "Is that really all, Mrs Easton? Didn't we agree to more?"

The woman looks cornered, but defiantly holds her head high. "Ambrose believes I ought to serve as a reminder to you that no one of noble blood, like you and me, should cede control of their lives to someone else. But I don't care for being a lesson to you – I do this for myself. What you take from it is your concern. I only care that whatever happens after I am gone, you and the others here will bear witness that no one – not the Queen of Great Britain, not the Prince of Wales, not all the devils in hell, could determine my fate, or the fate of the sons of my womb, for my bloodline bows to no one. I alone decide what happens to me, and mine."

She turns to Ambrose, and says: "There. I've said it. Keep your side of the bargain and let me end things the way I choose."

"Very well, Mrs Easton," Percival Ambrose says. "Carsten, do as I instructed earlier."

The tall figure with the obscured features replies: "Yes, master", and stretches out his left hand towards the Easton brothers, standing against the wall. It becomes apparent to Ciel and the other observers that Carsten is rendering the brothers incapable of movement, without physically touching them.

"Let me go!" Robert Easton cries, struggling to move, and failing. His brother does not attempt to speak, but his straining against his invisible bonds is causing him to break out in a sweat that plasters his fair hair to his forehead.

"What is he doing to them?" Ciel hisses in an undertone to Sebastian.

"He is immobilising them with a spell."

"Can you stop him?"

"No. It will take me at least half-an-hour to break through the shield he has erected around the entire room. Even if someone blows a hole through the walls of this tower with gunpowder, it will not penetrate that shield."

"Bloody hell."

They watch helplessly as Mrs Easton holds out a hand to Percival Ambrose, who slips a knife out from a sheath attached to a belt he wears under his coat, and places its hilt in her palm.

"Mrs Easton, no!" Lord Randall shouts, when he realises what she plans to do.

"I alone decide what happens to me and mine," she says calmly.

The Commissioner's men and the warders charge the doorway, but they are thrown backwards as hard as if they had flung themselves at a wall of stone. At Ciel's order, Sebastian ventures an assault on the invisible wall. He fares better than the men in that he is not thrown back, and succeeds in pushing his hand at least two inches deep into the magical shield, but that is as far as he gets before Mrs Easton walks up to her eldest son, George, and says to him: "From my body you came into this world, and by my hand and my hand only, you will leave this world."

She raises the knife to his throat and slits it deeply from one side of his neck to the other.

The devil Carsten releases his hold on the elder Easton brother, allowing him to collapse in a heap on the stone floor, clutching at his throat and gasping hopelessly for air through the gushing blood. Sebastian forces his fingers another inch deeper into the invisible shield, but even as he does, Mrs Easton steps up to her second son, Robert, repeats to him the words she spoke to her eldest, and slices his neck open with her blade. Carsten likewise releases his hold on him, and lets him fall to the ground beside his brother.

Outside the room, several men and one devil strain against the powerful shield, but cannot breach it before Sophia Easton passes over the terrified scullery maid and reporter cowering on the floor in one corner of the room, pronounces them unworthy of her attention, and turns back to face the people outside.

"No one determines how my life ends. Not God, not the Devil, not the Queen, and not you."

With that, she calmly raises the knife for a third time, and draws it deeply across her own throat. Blood pours down her dress. She drops the knife, sinks to the ground and sits upright for a minute in the centre of the great circle of green silk formed by the skirts of her dress, glares balefully at Ciel as the life leaves her body, and at last drops to the cold stone floor, dead.

The utter silence that falls over the room, inside and outside, is broken after several seconds by Percival Ambrose's voice: "She was a terrible woman, Lord Phantomhive. But she had the most admirable pride. Let that be a lesson to you – never allow someone else to determine how you live and die. Remember that, child, and when you next see me, perhaps you will allow me to save your soul."

The man nods to Carsten, who encircles him in his arms. Before the eyes of the humans watching them, master and servant disappear in a sharp gust of wind that blows a hole clean through the outer wall of the Bloody Tower. The invisible shield dissolves, and Lord Randall and his men tumble into the room where the Eastons lie dead. The scullery maid begins to scream hysterically, and the reporter holds his head in his hands and weeps.

"They didn't just disappear, did they?" Ciel whispers numbly to Sebastian, his feet rooted to the ground outside the room.

"No, my lord. Carsten picked his master up and broke through the tower wall. He moved too quickly for the human eye to see, but I saw. Shall I go after them?"

"No," Ciel says, watching the warders trying to calm Millie Clarke and help Stephen Chapman to his feet, and the Commissoner's men examining the Eastons' bodies. "Ambrose indicated that he would come to me. Let him come."

"Young Master, although I previously said we could wait for them to find us, I now see that it would be inadvisable to allow them to freely approach us. That devil is not only as powerful as I am, but uses his master's magical spells to amplify his natural abilities – which makes him _more_ powerful than me. If they come to us, I may not be able to protect you as well as I ought to."

"I don't see that it matters," Ciel replies. "If I don't come to an end at their hands, I come to an end at yours, or someone else's. What's the difference?"

"Ambrose is dangerous. Something is wrong with his hold over Carsten – that devil is completely under his control, in the most unnatural way–"

"Which may be no bad thing, considering what your kind are like once you're given a little latitude," Ciel returns curtly.

Sebastian gives no reply.

After a word with Lord Randall, Ciel concludes that there is nothing more he and Sebastian can do here. Millie Clarke and Stephen Chapman will be questioned by the police and warders about what happened in the night, but they are in no state to be interviewed at present.

"Sebastian, we're leaving," the earl announces, walking down the stairs and out of the Bloody Tower.

He is in an uncommunicative mood, for he has been quite affected by the cold-blooded murders of the Easton brothers at their own mother's hand, and by Mrs Easton's calm suicide. Despite the shock, however, he remembers the most ridiculously practical of matters: Mey-Rin's eyeglasses, which they ordered from a London optician the day after he had promised the girl he would get her a new pair.

"Stop at the optician's to pick up Mey-Rin's spectacles," he tells Sebastian.

The butler directs the horses towards the optician's shop, and Ciel waits in the carriage while Sebastian collects the prescription eyewear. In a few minutes, the butler returns, hands over the wooden box with the glasses in it, and receives his next order: "Drive to the town house. I want to look at some papers there before returning to the manor."

Sebastian wants to say that with Ambrose and his devil on the loose, he would prefer Ciel to be back at the manor, where at least Baldroy, Finnian and Mey-Rin can help to shield the master while Sebastian tackles Carsten if the worst happens. But the boy is not in the mood to be contradicted, so he obeys, and heads for the town house.

Once there, Ciel immediately goes into the study, where he digs up old Phantomhive records which have always been stored here, and were thus spared destruction in the manor fires. Sebastian has already studied them. Ciel knows the butler will have been thorough, but he wants to look, anyway, at what may have been written by his great-grandfather at the time Ambrose last attacked humans in London. Fifty years ago, Ciel's grandfather would only have been a small child of three or four, so the earl in power then would have been his great-grandfather, Charles, the one who changed the family name from Winterbourn to Phantomhive.

The letters and papers from his time are written in a strong but elegant hand, with side notes which suggest that Charles Phantomhive was a compassionate man. He more than once expressed regret over having to kill or order the destruction of certain enemies.

Ciel sighs and puts the documents away. If his great-grandfather had encountered Ambrose and the succubi he used at the time, no records remain of it. He leaves the study, and is about to tell Sebastian that they should return to the manor, when the butler holds up a hand to stop him from approaching the front door of the house.

"What is it?" Ciel demands.

"Young Master, they are here."

"They... you mean..."

"Ambrose and his devil are outside. Stand back."

A knock sounds at the door.

"They wouldn't knock if they intended to harm me," the earl scoffs. "Open the door. I have some words for him for the part he played in the bloodbath at the Tower."

"I do not think–"

"At this time, I do not care what you think. Let them in."

Sebastian hesitates half a second before opening the front door, admitting Percival Ambrose and Carsten.

"Mr Ambrose," Ciel growls. "You are responsible for the murders and suicide of the Eastons – why could you not wait until the courts passed their judgement before passing your own?"

"Lord Phantomhive," Ambrose smiles, bowing to him. "I thought I was avenging the insult to you and Lady Elizabeth."

"I do not need you to avenge me or my cousin," Ciel answers angrily. "You should answer to me, to Scotland Yard, and most of all, to the Prince of Wales, for those deaths. You also need to account for the murders you committed in London fifty years ago."

"So you have learnt that I was responsible for the acts of fifty years ago," Ambrose remarks. "Well done. Your great-grandfather would have been proud of you. He caught me, do you know that?"

"He caught you? My great-grandfather?" Ciel asks, surprised.

"After I attacked my last victim, but spared him because he was a good man, your great-grandfather cornered me and my succubus with spells – Charles Phantomhive was _very_ good with spells. But when I explained that I had let my most recent victim live, and intended to cease extending my years by means of extracting the life forces of other humans, he destroyed my succubus, then let me go. Because of his compassion for me, and his belief in my good intentions, I was in his debt. I was unable to repay him, however, before he died. So I decided that when the next opportunity arose to help his descendants, I would. I deeply regret not being in England three years ago, when your parents were killed – if I had been here, I would have intervened. But I wasn't here, and looking back at what might have been is futile. That I could help save the lives of Charles Phantomhive's great-granddaughter and great-grandson a few days ago is the little I have done so far to thank him for letting me go. Now, however, I hope to do even more."

"I don't need you to do any more than you already have," Ciel declares, wondering how old Ambrose really is, how he has sustained his youth without draining other people's life forces, and if the long years of living have not made him quite mad.

"I think you do, child," says Ambrose, taking a step deeper into the house as Carsten, with his face and dark-golden hair now fully uncovered, closes the door behind them.

Sebastian interposes his body between his master and the visitors, and Ciel instinctively moves backwards.

"You need me more than your father did, Lord Phantomhive," Ambrose insists. "For he only lost his life without losing his soul. You, on the other hand, have sold your soul to the devil, and you need me to save you."

"No, I don't," Ciel growls. "Sebastian, send them away!"

But as Sebastian begins to act on his master's command, Ambrose and the other devil move as one and throw something invisible at the butler that roots him to the spot, then slowly, painfully, forces him to his knees.

"Sebastian!" Ciel cries. He has for a long time wished to see his devil brought to his knees just so that he can wipe that smug look off his handsome face. But not like this... not like this...

"Young Master..." Sebastian gasps, straining against the bonds that hold him in place, and failing to break them.

"Release him at once!" Ciel orders the man and the devil standing before him.

"No, child," Ambrose says kindly, as if speaking to someone who may have difficulty understanding him. "I won't release him until he is completely under your control."

"He _is_ completely under my control!" the earl snarls. "Stop it now!"

"You _think_ he is completely under your control, but is he really?" Ambrose asks. "Look at _my_ devil – now _that_ is a devil completely under my thumb. He cannot take my soul, and cannot harm me, or so much as move without my command."

Ciel stares at Carsten's blank face and empty brown eyes, and suddenly understands what Sebastian meant about something being _wrong_ with this demon. He looks completely lifeless, like a puppet on strings.

"Trust me, child," Ambrose is speaking again, moving closer to Ciel. "Devils are evil things. They make you think you can rely on them, then when you least expect them to, they betray you. Did this devil promise you would have full control in this contract he offered you? Did he swear that he could not harm you or consume you without your permission? That's the oldest trick of all – it's what the most devious of them do. They wait for you to trust them, let your guard down, even come to love them, then they tear your heart out of your body for the pure delight of seeing the terror and betrayal in your eyes. You are too young to understand, but that is what they do, their kind."

Ciel wavers. Ambrose's warning strikes deep and connects with the suspicions he has had of Sebastian since he broke their first covenant, and since he sensed Sebastian's peculiar urges towards him. Could it be true? That his butler would gain his trust purely to derive a greater thrill from consuming him when he would least expect it? That dream he had... of the devil's shadow looming over him when he was happiest and most innocent, playing with Lizzie and the dog in the garden, comes back to him.

"Is that true?" he asks Sebastian numbly, naively, lifting his eye-patch.

His butler forces his bowed head up, and looks into his young master's eyes, which are full of doubt and confusion. Sebastian gives a peculiarly resigned huff of laughter and whispers his admission to the boy: "He's not wrong. Devils are cruel things. I did think of betraying you, while you were naked in my arms, wounded and sick. But it was a thought, no more. It was a thought I forced myself not to act on. I have not wished to destroy you since."

The earl looks as if he has been hit hard in the face. He had of course considered that it was possible – but hearing it from the demon's lips wounds him, nonetheless.

"There, child, what did I tell you?" Ambrose asks. "You can only trust him when he is so completely chained to your will, like a beast tethered within a large cage which you are always outside of, that he can never damage you even as he serves your every whim. I have already set the spell in motion – the one I used to capture and bind Carsten, and which will bind Sebastian to you for as long as you live, while never permitting him near your soul."

"You've begun the spell?" Ciel gasps, startled.

"Yes. The very spell I used to keep Carsten from touching my immortal soul, which would also sustain my life using his excess power, so I could retain my youth without harming humans. It does not diminish the main body of his power, which is entirely bent to serving me. You will now benefit from it – you may safely live off your devil as long as you please. I do not intend to live much longer – I've lived three hundred years, and I'm tired. Humans were never meant to live this long, or to develop the level of magical skills I have. But I will do this for you before I die – I will enslave your devil to you, and prepare to give Carsten to you as well once I am gone. I will explain it all to you in detail after the spell is complete."

A stunned Ciel can only stare as the physical manifestations of the spell become apparent to his eyes. He and Sebastian are enclosed together within a large dome of yellow light, while Ambrose and Carsten stand outside. A net of demonic and magical power wraps around Sebastian, trapping him, while a frighteningly bright lance of light begins to emerge from Ambrose's right hand. A narrow hole opens in the surface of the dome directly opposite Sebastian, and the lance travels through that opening. It enters the dome and aims its sharp point at Sebastian's heart. From its blunt end springs a chain of light that curls and twines around Ciel's wrist – the thing that will bind Sebastian to him forever, like a tame dog.

"Stop it!" Ciel cries to Ambrose. "This is unnecessary!"

Sebastian looks at his frantic young master and says gently: "Let it be, my lord. I have deserved no better."

The lance of light is now only inches away from Sebastian. Ciel looks again at Carsten's painfully blank face, and thinks he sees a suppressed glow of anguish in his brown eyes. Then he looks at Sebastian's face, which he has never known to express so much pain while masking it with stoicism. Suddenly, he knows that he cannot bear it – he cannot allow this – despite his anger with Sebastian last night, he would now rather die than let this happen. He should have died long ago, anyway. And if he should chance to live, then he would rather trust in whatever devilish honour is in Sebastian's unfeeling heart than turn him into a puppet whose strings he holds.

"No!" the boy yells, and in one swift move, he grasps the chain of light entwining his wrist and rips it off, then throws himself bodily between the lance and Sebastian's chest.

"No, child, NO!" Ambrose thunders, appalled, as he sees what is happening, but is powerless to break through the dome or to stop the spell in an instant once it is in full motion.

Sebastian, in the midst of his suffering, feels for the first time in his long life the emotion of absolute horror as he sees the boy – his covenanted master – the one for whom he is meant to sacrifice everything – now sacrificing himself to protect him from a fate of eternal enslavement.

"Young Master, no!" Sebastian cries furiously, helplessly, only to see in that instant the lance piercing Ciel from behind, thrusting through his chest and impaling him with its white-hot light. Somehow, the butler finds the strength in the reserves of his power to break his arms free of the net binding him so he can catch the boy as he collapses, wide-eyed with pain.

Ciel gasps once, staring blindly into his demon's eyes. The lance vanishes in an explosion of light, and Ciel falls limp and senseless over Sebastian's arms.

Ambrose pounds on the dome with his fists as Carsten works to undo it, but even as the pair outside attempt to reach the fallen boy, the damaged, disrupted spell cracks within the dome, opening a jagged slit of yellow light behind Sebastian. With only his arms outside the net, holding Ciel, the devil can do nothing as a force like a whirlwind drags him backwards through the gap. He vanishes through the crack, holding Ciel tightly. In a second, the gap closes up after them, and the dome is empty.

Ambrose and Carsten break through the wall at last, but the boy and his devil are gone.


	19. Despair

Sebastian's arms are torn and bleeding from breaking through the net, but he hardly notices his injuries. The child is all he sees, all he feels, as he is dragged backwards at great speed through nothingness.

"Young Master," he whispers urgently, hoping to feel the small body in his arms stir, or an irritated voice ordering him to do something about their situation. But the boy is still. He holds him close, not knowing when or if they will smash into something in this strange, featureless void.

He is hardly in the best position to protect Ciel while his head, body and legs remain trapped in the net, so he struggles to free himself. Cruelly, the mesh of light constricts his body even more, forcing his spine into a curve and making it impossible to straighten his legs. He cannot use his hands, for he must not let go of the child, who seems barely alive.

In an instant, everything changes around them. Sebastian, with his experience of worlds other than the earthly dimension of the living, understands that their surroundings abruptly look different not because they have travelled from one part of this space to another, but because the dimension is rapidly assuming a form according to someone's consciousness. His own? The child's? Or Ambrose's or Carsten's? _Someone_ connected with the disrupted spell is imposing his view of the world on this nowhere-world. He inhales the air, examines its elements, and finds it breathable by humans.

They are now above a dark, thick forest, high over the canopy of trees. They begin to fall. Sebastian cannot control his descent properly with the net about him, but he does the best he can, crashing onto the forest floor on his bent back, his body cushioning the impact for Ciel.

Pain erupts as his spine shatters against the ground. Everything hurts. But all he waits for in that world of agony is the sound of a heartbeat, the whisper of a breath, the scent of a still-flesh-bound soul, from the fragile body on top of him. At last, through his own pounding pain, he feels it – a faint pulse, the tiniest breath against his throat, the sense of a soul still united with its anchor of flesh and bones.

The boy lives.

The net cuts into Sebastian, draining his strength. He must tear off the mesh to recover, then do all in his power to save the child. He carefully rests the unconscious Ciel on the ground beside him, and begins to rip the glowing restraints apart with his fingers. It takes several painful minutes, but at last, he frees himself from the interlinked ropes of magical light, which dissolve into the forest floor. His back is still broken, but he is a devil, not a human, and can move even with a spine smashed in several places. He will mend – but what about Ciel?

"Young Master?" he calls, crouching over the boy.

No movement, and no response. He has no visible wounds, not even when Sebastian tears open his shirt and inspects the spot where the lance of light drove through him. Nothing is broken, nothing torn. The devil sniffs him deeply and listens to the sounds within his small body. He detects no traces of internal bleeding or other physical injury, although his heartbeat is faint and his breathing shallow.

"Foolish creature!" Sebastian whispers, softly at first, before sharpening his voice in anger. "Reckless child! Why did you… _why_?"

He looks around him. Trees, trees, and more trees. Where are they? Can they leave this place? He must get help for his master… but is he even his master any more? Sebastian becomes aware that the spell has damaged more than Ciel's consciousness. Something in the spell itself, or the disruption of it, has affected his covenant with the boy. He pulls the glove off his left hand and finds the mark on it so faded that it is little more than a smudge. Raising Ciel's right eyelid, he finds an iris of blue, streaked only with hints of magenta.

Their covenant has been so weakened by the spell as to scarcely merit the title of a contract.

Sebastian stands, straightens out his mending spine, and snaps the cracked sections into place, allowing his demonic body to repair itself as smoothly as it will. The blood he has shed seeps back into his flesh, every drop and stain of it removing itself even from his clothing to return to him. He stares at the child lying senseless on the floor of this mysterious forest as his bones knit together and his wounds close, and knows that in the purest of devilishly legalistic terms, he owes this human being no further allegiance.

But that part of him which had watched, horror-stricken, as the boy shielded him from the lance – that same part of him which had given the gift of a rose and offered his services beyond the five years of their second contract – also knows that legalistic terms matter not a whit any more.

"Impossible child," he murmurs, going down on bended knee to lift him into his arms so he can find them a way out of here. As he scents the air and checks his surroundings, he questions himself: Should he have left Ciel within the dome so that Ambrose could tend to him? Should he have held on to him as he was dragged through the crack?

He decides at once that he was not wrong to have done what he did. He did not know what could have happened to Ciel if he had left him inside the disintegrating dome. He did not know that Ambrose would have the ability to help him. He had therefore clung to his master, believing that if anyone had the desire and the strength to save him, it would be himself.

"Let us see if we can make our way out of here, my lord," he says to the earl with a smile, though he knows he cannot hear or see him. "Will you fly with me?"

Ascertaining that Ciel's head and neck are safely supported by his right arm, while his left arm cradles the crook of his knees, Sebastian leaps into the air above the trees. He does not make it as far beyond the canopy as he would like to, for his bones are still mending, and his strength has not fully restored itself after being sapped by the powers of the net. Still, he makes it far enough to seek a high, sturdy branch to land on. He checks that Ciel is still in one piece, gathers his strength again, and soars higher into the air, making sure to shield the child's face and legs from the twigs and leaves as they break through the crown of the canopy.

Far above them, a false moon shines. Is it Ciel Phantomhive's unconscious imagination that is decorating this nowhere-world with enormous trees, solid earth and a full silver moon? The spell was meant to benefit him, so perhaps he has the greatest influence over the after-effects of the damage done to it. Or could it be Ambrose who is determining the look and feel of this place? The devil does not like to think that they are lost in a world of that man's making, so he chooses to think of this as his master's world. He may not technically be his "master" any more, but for all intents and purposes, this _is_ his little master – this and no other.

"Where are we, my lord?" he asks as he soars through the air, aware that no answer will come from those pale lips.

He drops lightly back onto the highest branch he can find, from which he surveys their surroundings. No forest this large exists in the Great Britain of today. Indeed, if his devil's eyes do not fool him, the trees extend so far beyond every horizon that this nowhere-world is probably larger – much larger – than the whole of the British Isles put together.

His eyes see nothing in all directions but forest and more forest; his senses detect not a single animal, human or demon in this place besides himself and Ciel, and not one drop of water. This is not hell – he has lived there, and knows that hell has nothing like this forest. It is not heaven – he was there a long, long time ago, and heaven has nothing like this. It is not the world of the living – nothing as devoid of animal life and moisture, but so full of trees, exists on earth.

This is not a place where the child can survive for long, once he comes to. If he comes to.

Sebastian begins to doubt that he did the right thing in holding on to him as he was dragged through the crack. Perhaps he would have been better off being tended to by Ambrose. Perhaps a doctor or magical healer in London could have ministered to him. Perhaps...

The tiniest groan reaches his sharp ears, and Ciel stirs. At once, he returns to the forest floor and holds the boy so that he can see his face.

"Young Master?" he says softly, once those beautiful blue eyes open a crack.

Ciel does not answer – perhaps he cannot answer – but he fixes his eyes on Sebastian's face, and does not once glance away.

"Why did you do something so foolish?" Sebastian asks. "You should never have put yourself in harm's way."

A ghost of a smile touches Ciel's lips, as if to say: _Idiot of a devil – what else was I to do?_

"Reckless brat," Sebastian mirrors the wan smile.

The blue eyes blaze, and Sebastian's smile deepens, for that flare of annoyance gives him hope that not only has the spell not harmed his master's free will, but there is strength in him which may pull him through this.

"Yes, you may punish me at your leisure for calling you names, once you are well. But first we must leave this place, and you must heal."

A small hand creeps up Sebastian's chest and rests on his shoulder, then bridges the space between his shoulder and his head, and touches the devil's cheek lightly before it falls. His eyes close again.

"Was that a caress? Or were you trying to slap me again? You can hit me all you please when you recover," the devil promises.

Ciel does not reopen his eyes.

"I no longer want to devour your soul," Sebastian growls, shaking him a little. "Don't you _dare_ present it before me."

The boy is fading. His heartbeat is fainter than it was before. The rise and fall of his chest with his shallow breaths is barely discernible. Sebastian yearns to be on the devils' island now, for on the night he was supposed to take Ciel's soul, it healed the boy from a gunshot wound that would have been fatal. It could perhaps save him again. While most devils have no talent for healing, that island has the mysterious power to revive mortals borne onto it, so that a demon preparing to devour its master may derive the fullest pleasure from taking a life in bloom, and not a creature already at death's door, scarcely worth the killing.

"If I could take you there, I would," he whispers to the unconscious Ciel as he walks through the forest, not knowing where he is going, but needing to be on the move, as if physical motion could rock the child's life forces back into wakefulness and give his breath momentum. "I would ensure that you were healed, and I would not devour you afterwards. I wouldn't harm you, not any more."

His only answer is silence. Not a breath of wind stirs the leaves in the trees, and not a sound comes from Ciel. Something breaks inside Sebastian to think that this human in his arms shielded him with his own body, with his own life. No one, mortal or demon, had ever done that for him before. Devils show no mercy, but this particular devil has been shown mercy by someone he least expected to receive it from, and he can scarcely grasp it.

"Reckless little master," he says softly. "What were you thinking? Were you mimicking that fool Abberline's sacrifice for you? He died for you because he saw a future for you, and greater power to change the world for his unborn child than he would ever have. What were _you_ thinking, giving yourself for one such as me?"

What kind of mortal child would try to protect a demon?

"I want you alive and well," he tells the boy. "Are you such a weakling, to die so easily? Would you do it purely to spite me? Truly?"

He keeps walking, and thinking hard, keeping all his senses at their highest level of alertness to detect some weakness in the elements that hold this world together.

"Wake up, Young Master," he tries to order the boy to return to consciousness. "Together, we can think of something. With your cunning and my strength, we could..."

That very moment, he makes out a change in the atmosphere. He looks up to see a crack of light in the sky a mile away. It reluctantly grows, as if it is being forced open. Sebastian speeds towards it, but it darkens as it is filled by someone's silhouette, then closes and disappears as the person who has forced his way through floats downward, gliding smoothly through the forest canopy to land before them.

It is Carsten who has entered this strange world.

Sebastian shifts his grip on Ciel and transfers the boy's weight to his left arm, preparing to do battle with his right.

"I have not been sent here to fight you," the other devil says in his passive, scarcely inflected voice. "I will do that only if I am obliged to in order to take the child from you."

"Why do you wish to take him from me?" Sebastian asks.

"My master will help him. Give him to me."

"I will do that only if I know that your master can save him."

"He will do his utmost."

"But _can_ he save him?"

"I do not know," Carsten admits.

"Then I will take him back myself, to see that Ambrose _does_ save him."

"I am not permitted to bring you back with me. My orders are to return with only the child, if he lives. If you do not yield the boy, I am to destroy you to an extent that will require centuries for you to heal from, then take him from you by force."

"I _must_ know that Ambrose will be able to save him. What has the disruption of the spell done to him? He was pierced by the lance intended for me – what will that do to him?"

"The spell was designed to chain a devil to a human, not the other way around. The lance has done nothing that will enslave the boy to anyone. However, it has damaged his spirit. My master will attempt to remedy that."

"But you cannot assure me that he will be able to remedy it?"

"No." Carsten suddenly winces, and a look of pain crosses his face, which had been perfectly expressionless before then.

"What is wrong?" Sebastian asks suspiciously.

"This place... hurts me," Carsten rasps. "I must take the child now, and return to my master."

"What is this place, anyway?" Sebastian demands, wondering if the other devil is quite stable. "Where is it? How large is it? Are you permitted to explain that to me?"

"I am not forbidden to tell you what I know," says Carsten, slowly overcoming whatever was hurting him. "This world reaches as far in every direction as the world of the living. It is the shadow of the spell that my master perfected as he travelled the earth before he trapped me, depositing markers in every land he sojourned in. He did that to weave a net as large as the world, so that no matter where we went, or how far he unleashed me to go from him, the spell would always hold me, and I could not leave the earth without his permission. Earthly distance would never weaken the chains, or my obedience to him. As this place is the shadow of that spell, you cannot escape unless an opening is made for you, or what remains of the spell disintegrates, any more than a mortal can escape the earth by travelling north, south, east or west."

"Do the positions here correspond with the positions in the world of the living?" Sebastian questions. "If we leave this place, would we emerge in England?"

"I am not certain. This is as new to me as it is to you. But I think the positions correspond. We entered from the same place in London, and we emerged in this vicinity, rather than hundreds of miles apart. Now, I have told you what I know. Give me the boy."

"Without an assurance that he will be safe?"

"Do you not understand by now that his injuries are spiritual, not physical?" Carsten asked. "You are harming him by keeping him with you. Devils like us not only have no power to heal the human spirit, but by our very presence, will contaminate and drain a spirit that is already damaged. In his state, he will fade more quickly by your side."

Sebastian gazes at Ciel's pale face. Is it true that he is harming the boy by staying with him while he is in this condition? He cannot deny that Ciel's heartbeat and breathing have worsened since they arrived in this place.

"Give him to me. I will take him to my master," Carsten says with a firmness that Sebastian has not heard in the other devil's voice until this moment. "I do not know if he can save him, but he has a better chance with him than with you."

"I must be certain that he can be saved. Take me with you – in any condition. I will permit you to bind me, break my body – I will let your master complete the spell without interference – only let me protect the boy."

"No. My master has designed the opening I am to return by to only admit me, and the child. It will not let you pass. He has seen that the boy has formed an unhealthy attachment to you, and will fight the spell if he attempts to enslave you to him again. Therefore, he must separate you from your master. Once he completes the spell using me in your place, this world will be sealed forever, with you in it. You are to remain here, between heaven, hell and earth, for as long as you exist. And you are never to see the boy – or anyone else – again."

Sebastian considers the information Carsten has given him. He may be imprisoned here forever, utterly alone. But the alternative would be to let Ciel die here, pointlessly. After death, his soul might disappear before Sebastian's eyes to wherever the powers of the universe decide it must be bound for, or the foolish creature might struggle to keep his consciousness in this nowhere-world to be with him. What kind of eternal life would that be? Another possibility would be that he would ask Sebastian to devour him, which would in some way make him part of the devil forever, but also condemn him to a hellish consciousness forever merged with every other dark soul ever destroyed by Sebastian, never to escape the damnation of an existence without light, without hope, without love.

"Take him with you," Sebastian decides, holding Ciel out to Carsten. "Save him."

Carsten receives the boy from his fellow devil. Ciel gives a small, unconscious moan as he is handed over.

"Be careful with him. He's very delicate. He..."

Sebastian does not finish what he began to say. Carsten waits, finds no more words forthcoming from the other male, and walks away.

"Look after him well," the butler finally adds.

"It is not as if I will have a choice," Carsten returns, without looking back.

The line of light reappears in the sky above the devil holding the boy. Sebastian knows he could attempt to force his way through, regardless of whether it was designed to admit him or not. But that could mean a stand-off, and a delay. Ciel does not have much time. So he stands back and watches, expecting Carsten to leap into the air and disappear with his master. But the other devil does not move from the ground, although the doorway grows brighter, beckoning him. Sebastian wonders what he is waiting for when he sees him beginning to shudder violently, as if battling something within him, before he becomes very still.

"What are you waiting for?" Sebastian demands. "Take him to your master now."

Carsten remains still, not answering. Sebastian is about to speak to him again when he turns around and looks hard at him out of glowing amber eyes that the butler had not thought could look this much alive in a devil so subdued by magic. Sebastian's own eyes narrow as he realises that something has happened to Carsten in the time he has spent in this nowhere-world. His suspicions prove accurate when the other devil's lips stretch out in a smile.

"Yes, indeed. What _am_ I doing?" Carsten sneers at himself in a surprised tone of voice. "It is not as if I will have a choice when I return to my master and let him bind me for another – what? fifty years? – to this ridiculous brat."

"You've broken free of the spell," Sebastian remarks, swiftly assessing how best to snatch Ciel back without hurting the boy.

"Not _entirely_ ," Carsten spits out bitterly. "I still feel its chains on me, but this place – this world that is not heaven, not hell and not earth – the shadow of the spell, as it were, is weakening my master's fifty-year hold over me. The _bastard_ treats me like a bloody donkey."

"Go back, leave the boy with Ambrose, and get away from him. He may not be able to chain you again if you escape quickly enough," Sebastian says, watching him keenly to make sure he does not harm Ciel.

"No."

"Then take me with you, and I will shield you from Ambrose – only save the child."

"No," Carsten decides, with a heartlessly flippant smile, as he deposits Ciel rather roughly on the forest floor. "I'm not taking the brat. Ambrose designed that spell specifically to benefit the boy. If I return with him, I'm as good as chaining myself to another worthless master for several more decades – it would be like bringing along with me the new lock for my cell and presenting it to my jailer! But if I return _without_ him, Ambrose may not be able to react as quickly when I turn on him, and either kill him, or leave him for good."

"You _can_ take the boy with you _and_ get away from your master," Sebastian presses. "It won't be impossible, now that you have recovered some of your independence."

"Forget it," Carsten snaps. " _You're_ another matter, though. I've nothing against you. If you think you can trust a fellow-devil, listen to me: Once Ambrose dies _without_ completing the spell, and the spell disintegrates, this place will crack open, and you can make your way back to the world of the living, where you may do as you please. He's a tough bastard, and could take a while to expire even without my life force sustaining him – which he's been culling from me with his magic like a parasite. But waiting for him to die won't be a problem for you. All you'll need is patience, and you'll be out of here eventually."

"I may have the time to wait, but the child doesn't," Sebastian says coldly.

"Here's my advice: Leave the brat to die. Ambrose's beliefs may have planted ideas in his head, and you never know when he'll decide to learn magical crafts and turn them against you. Give up on him, and save yourself. There are millions more mortals to amuse you for centuries to come."

Carsten prods Ciel with his foot, contemplates his pallor and fragility, and adds: "I don't know what you see in this scrawny little thing. He's as good as gone. Discard him. You do realise that your attachment to him has weakened you, don't you? You must have noticed some problems of late – like not knowing where he was? If I were in your place, I would have nothing more to do with him."

He pokes at Ciel again with the tip of his boot, and the boy's eyelids flutter weakly. Sebastian glides forward in an instant and picks Ciel up to get him away from that unkind foot. The alteration in Carsten's personality, from his suppressed state to his natural character, is vast, and Sebastian is surprised to find he _hurts_ on Ciel's behalf to think that the boy might be served in the years to come by someone so uncaring.

Still, this individual standing before him is his best hope for saving him. So Sebastian tries again, saying: "Take him with you and leave him at a healer's. Don't even stop for Ambrose."

But the other answers: "I'm not risking being bound to him if something goes wrong with my escape. I will _not_ take him. Goodbye."

With a grin, Carsten leaps up into the crack of light in the air high above them. Sebastian follows with the aim of forcing his way through the aperture, but it appears to sense his approach, and shuts itself off after Carsten, leaving behind no sign that it was ever there.

He drifts back to the ground, stares up at where the opening was, looks down at the dying child in his arms, and feels despair as he has not felt in ages. He does not care if at this moment, Carsten is tearing Ambrose to pieces in the town house, or fleeing from him, or if Ambrose has recaptured the devil. He only knows that there is nothing he can do for Ciel. He has no means of getting him help until Ambrose dies without finishing the spell, and the spell disintegrates. How long will that take? A minute? An hour? A year? Ten years? His master may not have as much as an hour left.

He searches the sky and forest for a sign that something is breaking open to give them a route of escape. But everything remains firmly intact. Carsten cannot have succeeded in killing Ambrose or shattering the spell.

Ciel's heartbeat fades a little more. Remembering what Carsten said about his demonic energy doing damage to mortals with spiritual injuries, Sebastian contemplates setting Ciel down under a tree and searching for a way out before coming back for him. But he cannot accept the thought of leaving his side. The child has the worst knack for getting into trouble when left alone, and Sebastian will not chance any more problems.

If he searches hard enough, and fast enough, for a weakness in the boundaries of the spell's shadow, then he can bear his master quickly to someone who might be able to heal him. Keeping in mind Carsten's speculation that the physical spaces in this place could correspond to those on earth, Sebastian tries to orientate himself so that if he does find a crack somewhere, he will be able to gauge if they will emerge in England, or on the Continent, or in the middle of the ocean. It is nearly impossible, for he has no idea which of the ways might match the directions of the compass on earth. No, it does not matter. He will do his best. Even if they land in the middle of the most expansive sea in the world, he will leap from wave to wave and make his way to someone who knows how to heal the wounds afflicting the boy.

He sails into the air and flies from treetop to treetop, his feet finding clever purchase on both the most delicate of twigs and the sturdiest of branches to launch himself to the next spot, and the next, all the while scanning his surroundings with his eyes, nose and other senses, searching for an opening. He can see and feel the spaces around them for miles in every direction as he travels, but no opportunity emerges. He circles round, hoping that he is keeping within the bounds of what would correspond with the British Isles, France, and other parts of the Continent close to advanced human civilisation, someplace where help will be within easy reach.

He makes a great arc in minutes, finally returning to where they began. Nothing in the air or on the ground has revealed a weakness in its magical structure. He leaps as high into the night sky as he can and slashes at it as his fingernails grow into sharp claws, but those claws rend nothing that can be opened by him. Needing to try all means, although he knows his efforts may be futile, he descends to the forest floor, puts Ciel down, takes off his own coat, and carefully wraps the boy in it to keep him warm.

He begins to dig with his bare hands, displacing yards of earth and creating a hole many feet deep, then deeper still. But his nose soon tells him that he could tunnel down for miles, and never find an opening that would lead him back to Ciel's world. It is not a physical doorway he needs to break through, but a magical one.

He digs a few feet more, accepts at last the futility of it, and leaps out of the hole to return to Ciel's side. His hands are so dirty that he does not want to contaminate his master with the soil. No water is here for him to wash with, so he stands aside and waits patiently till his demon's skin has cleared all the dirt off it with its supernatural powers, and he is clean again, before kneeling beside Ciel to whisper: "Forgive me. I have failed."

Cradling the boy in his arms, he begins to walk, like a man who hopes his restless infant child will sleep peacefully as he paces the floor of the nursery. Only that his hopes are quite the reverse: that his sleeping child will awaken as he paces the forest floor.

"That foolish devil asked what I saw in you," he murmurs in a monologue to the unconscious boy as he measures the endless forest with his footsteps. "Do you know what I admire in you? I admire your courage. Your strength of character. Your determination. Your intelligence. Your compassion. You think I understand nothing of compassion, but I understand it very well, although I have not practised it before this time. I grudgingly admire the instinct you have to protect the innocent without regard for yourself, the way you protected Elizabeth. I genuinely admire your ruthlessness with individuals such as me, and your cruelty to the wicked. I admire your nobility, and your dignity, and how you never indulge in self-pity. There. That is what I see in you."

Ciel stirs slightly, but does not awaken.

"And of course, you are quite beautiful in face and form."

Sebastian fights to keep a firm grip on himself. Surrendering to despair will not help the boy.

"I could have broken the spell after it was completed," he mutters. "I could have tried to fight it, with a better chance of breaking it than you would have of surviving that lance. Why did you risk yourself for a butler so worthless that he cannot help you now?"

The boy's heartbeat grows fainter, slower. Sebastian wraps his arms tightly around him and rests the earl's head on his shoulder.

"Live, and grow up, and take all the wives and lovers you want. I'll always be with you. That night on the island, I told you that I would be by your side only if we were in a contract. I meant it then, but I no longer wish it to be so. Even when you no longer want me, I will watch over you. And when at last you die an old man, I will follow your soul wherever it goes, only to remain with you. But for now, live. Your time _cannot_ have come. I did not spare you only to watch you separate your soul from your body now. Your soul is your consciousness, your memories and the truest essence of your nature, and that is all very well and good – but everything is _different_ while one is still in the body, do you know that? You have so much more to do, and learn, and love."

He turns his face towards the head on his shoulder and presses a kiss to the boy's temple. His life is slipping away, literally out of Sebastian's hands, and something deep inside the devil cracks.

He stares up at the false moon and the false night sky, and knows that there is nothing more he can do for the child. Nothing within his own power. Except... perhaps... to ask for that which is beyond his own power. It is not anything that a devil would do. But what else is left? How ridiculous to even contemplate it. Absurd. Stupid. Yet, what more remains?

He shifts Ciel in his embrace again so that he can look at his face, and knows that he will try anything – anything – to let him live as long as, or even longer than he was meant to.

"Please," he utters, inaudibly at first, staring down at the ground.

He does not know how to do this. It is all wrong – a devil, _praying_? Praying to what? To whom? But it is all he has now, in his moment of desperation – not for himself, but for someone else – so he lifts his face to the night sky and begs with all the sincerity in his demon heart: " _Please!_ "

He waits. Nothing happens. He laughs silently, bitterly. Of course it would not work. Who would listen to the prayers of a demon?

He bows his head, presses another kiss to the boy's hair, and lowers himself to the ground in defeat. It is over. The child is barely alive. He will watch him die, perhaps communicate with his soul for a time, then when Ambrose expires at last, far too late, he will gather Ciel Phantomhive's corpse, or his bones, and return them to the world of the living, where he will bury him with his own hands on the grounds of the manor, where the boy has always preferred to be...

Something shifts in the atmosphere.

Sebastian looks up, hardly daring to hope. There. A crack of golden light. Right there, above them, near the moon. He does not hesitate. He soars into the air, aims for the light, and flies through the gap. For a moment after emerging on the other side, he is quite disoriented, so hard is it to believe that he has borne his little master out of that vast prison. Where are they? Where?

He looks around him, scents the air, and can scarcely believe his good fortune – they are in London, in a familiar place, for it is along the route they flew over on the night they were pursuing Susan Rothstein's succubus.

"Thank you," he whispers into the night, although he does not like to think too deeply about who he is thanking.

Not far away is the church where they first met John Jarvis, the vicar with the ginger cat. And Sebastian knows at once what he must do to save Ciel from the spiritual injuries draining the life from him. As a demon, he has no power to heal this child. But perhaps someone much, much more accustomed to prayer than he is can do something to help.

Someone with a kind heart, who loves cats.

Sebastian clutches Ciel to his chest and whispers to him: "Hold on, Young Master. Please hold on a moment more."

With his precious burden in his arms, the devil sprints towards the church.


	20. Compassion

"Mister Jarvis!" Sebastian calls, thumping on the door of the small house in the church compound. At least one lamp is lit inside; the glow penetrates the thin curtains.

He hears the vicar hurrying to the door, which soon opens.

"Yes? What is–" John Jarvis begins, only to break off as his eyes register what is illuminated by the candle he holds – the pale, unconscious boy in his butler's arms. "It's you! Good heaven, the earl…"

"Please help my master," Sebastian makes his urgent request.

"What happened to him?" the vicar asks, stepping aside at once to admit them. "Bring him in quickly – I'll fetch a doctor. I know one who lives just down the…"

"A doctor cannot help him," Sebastian interrupts, displacing a few cats as he lays Ciel down on a faded sofa in the area of the house that appears to be used as a living room. "Physical injury did not cause this. There is no time to explain, but he has sustained spiritual injuries. He needs someone like you to heal him. I cannot do it."

"Spiritual injuries?" Jarvis asks, bewildered, lifting another cat out of the way. "And _I_ can heal him?"

"Better you than me. Whatever you do for those afflicted in spirit – however you minister to them – please do it. It is beyond me."

The vicar studies Sebastian's face. He is thoroughly confused about what could have happened to the Earl of Phantomhive, but he cannot mistake the butler's desperate concern for the boy.

"You are asking me to pray for him?" Jarvis seeks clarification, looking down at the small, still figure, wrapped in a coat much too large to be his own.

"Yes."

As a vicar who delivers sermons, ministers to the soul-weary and prays many times a day, John Jarvis is ready and willing to do what he can. But he is also a rational man living in an age of reason filled with wonders of engineering, medicine, science and new discoveries and philosophies from all over the world, and he cannot but wonder if he should not be running for the doctor immediately instead of kneeling beside this boy, who looks almost lifeless.

"Please help him," Sebastian pleads. "If a doctor could heal him, he would have the best tending to him this moment. If _I_ could help him, we would not be here – you saw me before – you know what I am…"

"I will do what I can," the vicar assures him gently, sympathising with the controlled anxiety in his voice.

"I cannot remain too close to him in his present condition. I may have done enough damage already. I will wait outside."

The butler leaves the house and shuts the door after him. Jarvis unwraps the coat covering the boy, observes that he does not appear to be bleeding or broken anywhere, nor is he feverish, but he is fading away. He sees that he is not wearing an eye-patch now, and gently lifts his eyelids – the doctor he knows once taught him how to look for signs of life in an unconscious person. Both those eyes look whole and normal, but barely respond to the light of his candle.

He does not know what is going on. Somewhere in his rational mind he still wonders if any good will come of this. Nevertheless, he has been asked for help, and he will help however he may.

***

Sebastian looks in through the thin curtains of the front window as the vicar prays beside Ciel. He is concerned that if Ciel should wake, not see him, and fail to recognise the vicar, he may be distressed. But he cannot go back in, not after having spent so much time holding him in the shadow of the spell, possibly harming him.

He watches for a minute before looking towards the churchyard. His sharp ears can make out what is happening indoors, the simple, heartfelt words the man is uttering, but he does not want to listen. Prayers to anything holy make him uncomfortable, but more important than that, he thinks he will not be able to bear it if those prayers do not work.

He closes his ears to everything within the house and focuses on what is outdoors. It is the night after the full moon. That silver orb in the sky is close in appearance to, though not as big or perfectly round as the large, full, false moon under whose light he felt such despair. He still wonders whose vision it was that imposed itself on the look and feel of that nowhere-world. Whose forest were they so lost in?

A small movement to his left draws his attention to a cat slipping out through a tiny, top-hinged door built into the base of the vicar's front door. She approaches him confidently, so he picks her up and strokes her to soothe both her and himself. She assesses him coolly, then submits to the stroking and closes her luminous, green-yellow eyes.

"He dislikes cats, you know," he murmurs to the brindle-coated beauty in his arms. "He sometimes has difficulty breathing well, and cat hair aggravates his condition. But if you and your companions could make him sneeze and cough and wake up now, he should have little cause for complaint, shouldn't he?"

She lets him admire and pet her a little longer, before the smells, sounds and darting movements of field mice and moles become too irresistible. He releases her, and she trots into the churchyard, accompanied by another cat, white with wheat-coloured points, which has also slipped out of the house.

Sebastian watches them go in separate directions to hunt their prey alone amongst the gravestones. He is like them in so many ways, except that he has developed an unexpectedly deep attachment to one particular mouse, an odd little mouse who thinks himself a watchdog and protector of so many things that he often does not realise he should perhaps not defend. His butler, for instance.

He shakes his head as he once more pictures Ciel throwing himself in front of him in the magical dome. _Impulsive child._

He must recover. He must heal. _I cannot allow you to die for me._

This is all his fault. If he had not formed a new interest in the boy; if he had never shown by word and deed that he had begun to experience a different kind of affection for him... If he had kept everything as it was in their first contract – efficiently honouring their agreement while regularly mocking him for his lack of talent at anything apart from getting kidnapped, adding spice to the flavour of his soul, Ciel would not have considered shielding him. He would very likely have thought Ambrose's proposal most sensible, and damned Sebastian to his fate without compunction.

But something changed in the course of their brief second contract. It was he who underwent the change, and tempted Ciel along.

_You mustn't die because of me._

He had seen himself as a mentor and king-maker, honing to perfection an aristocratic child with great potential to become all he wished to be. He could, if the boy had desired it, wiped out every successor to the throne of Great Britain until no one was left but Ciel Phantomhive. He could have made him king, emperor, lord over all he surveyed. Of course his master had never had an interest in occupying the throne – real power was to be had elsewhere. Knowing he could make that real power possible for him, he had developed a genuine interest in the child's future.

Then Agni's intervention at the Easton brothers' had in an instant turned his interest into possessive desire. Even so, things might have remained at that and no more had the incident at the mill and its aftermath not triggered a predatory lust for his master. And when Ciel had put him firmly in his place, he had slithered snakelike out of that tricky game and tried a different tactic of seduction.

If he had not done any of that, the boy would never have viewed him as anything other than a dog of war, a pawn to be sacrificed in the course of achieving his ambitions.

_You should have thrown me to the wolves._

Yet, without all that, he would not have discovered the depths of his own affection for this one mortal either. He had never thought it possible. The possessiveness and lust alone were not unusual – he has had masters and mistresses he serviced thoroughly in the bedroom, with the luscious, thirty-year-old French duchess from two centuries ago, and the decrepit, seventy-six-year-old Spanish Infanta from Castile nearly five hundred years ago being memorable examples.

The fondness alone was not remarkable either – he has by and large been reasonably gentle with the humans he has formed contracts with, up until each covenant's end in blood and violence.

He cannot even say there is anything so very different about Ciel compared with other mortals shadowed by tragic pasts. The greatest distinction has been in the boy's decisions and actions, the latest of which – his astounding attempt to shield his servant – has pushed Sebastian over the edge of desire and affection into... what?

This must be like the madness called love that flames between humans. When a woman falls in love with a man, she must know he is like every other man on earth, but to her, he is like no other. A man wildly in love with one woman surely realises she is like every other woman on earth, but in his eyes, she is like no one else.

Ciel, to him, is like no one else. Sebastian does not imagine that a devil would be capable of love. But perhaps it is close enough.

_Have you the least idea how furious I would be with you if you were to die for me?_

He considers what he would miss about Ciel if he were no longer in a physical body, and finds himself thinking of absurd little things: how hopeless a dancer the boy is, the grumpy look on his face when he is obliged to learn a new piece of music, his love for eating sweets, how he resembles a cat when he sleeps, how he likes baths, how he has grown a little taller and more beautiful since the day Sebastian first set his demon's eyes on him.

A soul – a consciousness – could not do all that. At least, it would not _need_ to do all that. If it did, it would only be going through the motions of its old life, clinging uselessly to the unnecessary.

_I want to see you grow up. I want to be beside you as you grow old. I want to be with you when your body dies a natural death._

Would he have that privilege? Would he earn the right to remain by his side? Would it even be good for the earl to keep a devil with him? Perhaps he should leave him and keep his distance, and only protect him from afar–

The senses he has closed off to what is happening inside the house snap back to attention when the door opens. He sees the vicar emerging, his greying head of hair framing a tired face that soon brightens with a relieved smile, and hears the words: "His Lordship is awake. He is asking for you... Sebastian – is that your name?"

With the contract so damaged, he need not be "Sebastian" any longer, but he would choose no other name at this time. He answers: "Yes. Does he truly want to see me?"

"You are the first and only one he has asked for. Please come in."

Sebastian steps into the doorway. The house has no hallway, thus giving him a clear view of the most welcome sight he has seen in some time: Ciel sitting up on the vicar's old sofa, the butler's coat pooled around him. A cat occupies the other end of the sofa, but the earl does not seem to object.

"Come in, come in," the vicar repeats, steering Sebastian out of the doorway and into the house with a warm hand on his back.

The butler is stooping before the sofa in a second, looking deep into the boy's eyes to see if he is really all right.

"Young Master...?" he says softly. It is part greeting, part enquiry, and mostly an utterance of relief and pleasure.

Ciel gazes back at him, saying nothing for so long that Sebastian fears he is not himself.

He turns to the vicar and questions him: "Are you certain that he asked for me? He doesn't seem able to speak."

"Don't talk about me as if I weren't sitting right here," Ciel grumbles.

The butler smiles at the mixture of exasperation and resignation in his voice as he cups the boy's cheek in his right hand. "Do you feel unwell? Am I harming you by coming too close to you?"

"Harming me? Why would you... oh, you mean what Carsten said. I was mostly asleep, but I did hear him say something about the risk of spiritual damage."

"If you feel at all ill, you must let me know immediately, and I will move away from you until you heal fully."

"I'm quite well," Ciel replies after a pause. "I wasn't, earlier. I remember the spell. I thought I was dying. I remember the enormous trees... and you... and..."

The earl's eyes light on Sebastian's left hand, resting on the edge of the sofa. He sees the smudged remnant of the pentagram, and stares, wide-eyed, into the devil's face again.

Sebastian gazes back at him, shakes his head to communicate the message that he should not think about the contract now, and that they will discuss it later, before standing up and turning to the vicar.

"Mister Jarvis, thank you for this – for all you have done."

"I have done nothing except pray," the vicar replies. "God is the one who has done the work."

"Then I thank you and your God for all the good you have done," Sebastian says quietly, knowing he has no right to have benefited in any way from this situation, but more than grateful for it on Ciel's behalf.

"Are you hungry?" the vicar asks. "I have very humble fare, but it will do no harm either."

Ciel shakes his head, and Sebastian declines politely.

"Perhaps you are thirsty, then?" the man suggests.

"I am rather thirsty," Ciel admits.

"I shall put the tea kettle on," Jarvis says kindly.

"Thank you. We would be most grateful for a little tea," Sebastian replies.

As the vicar goes about lighting a small stove fire with the flame from a lamp, the butler busies himself wrapping Ciel warmly in his coat and making him lie down. The boy had been clad only in his waistcoat, shirt and shorts at the moment when Ambrose and Carsten entered the town house; he should not be exposed to the cold night air after just recovering from the disrupted spell. Sebastian watches him keenly, to be certain he does not miss any signs of discomfort, pain or illness.

Ciel looks at him once as he lies down, and looks away. He glances at him again to find him still watching him like a hawk, and a slight blush forms on his cheeks. No human would see that tiny blush in such poor light, but Sebastian does.

"I beg your pardon for staring, my lord," he says very softly. "I must watch you closely to be sure you are not becoming weaker instead of improving with each passing minute."

"Why would you care?" Ciel whispers back, looking at his butler's nearly unmarked hand.

Sebastian, noting with interest that the boy's embarrassment no longer triggers his predatory urges, answers: "Because you are my master, contract or no contract."

Ciel, blushing a little more, remarks with irony: "Idiot of a butler. After all I did to wreck the spell, you've still ended up a fawning lap dog."

"Oh, the _tragedy_ ," Sebastian replies with heavier irony, which makes Ciel scowl before he shuts his eyes for a few minutes to rest.

At last, Jarvis carries over a teapot with a strainer full of tea leaves already in it, and puts it on a coaster on the small table near the sofa after warning the cats off. A minute later, he pours out three cups and hands the first to the earl.

"Thank you," the boy sits up and receives the plain cup filled with perfectly ordinary Indian tea much more gratefully than he has ever taken any of his expensive tea blends in their fine-china sets. "I will not forget what you have done for me tonight, Mister Jarvis."

"Think nothing of it, Your Lordship. This is but a small thing I have been able to do for you after you and Mister Sebastian saved me and Tomkin that night."

"Tomkin?" Ciel asks.

"My ginger cat – there he is," Jarvis points out the well-kept, lush-coated feline perched like a loaf of bread on a chair at the back of the room. "Except for Tomkin, I named each of the cats I took in after the apostles, with female versions of those names for the she-cats. Fortunately, I do not have more than twelve at present! Tomkin was my daughter's cat, and named by her. She died a few years ago. She and her husband had no children – that cat was her child – so I took it in when my son-in-law left England a year after her passing, even though I was not particularly fond of cats at the time. Now look at me – _twelve_ cats, and Tomkin my favourite. Although he is not named after an apostle, I have named none of the other cats Thomas, so he represents Saint Thomas."

"My master and I are very pleased that we were of some help to you and Tomkin," Sebastian answers in his best butler's voice.

"If I may ask, how did your daughter die, Mister Jarvis?" Ciel asks.

"She fell ill with a fever and never recovered. She was my only child. Only twenty-two, she was then, and married but three years. My wife had passed away, also of illness, some years before that. I took it quite hard at the time, but seeing how utterly distraught my son-in-law was made me understand that there was nothing I could do to help myself or others by falling to pieces. My son-in-law never got over it – they were childhood sweethearts, you see. He left for India a year after Nellie died. He writes often, but his life is not the same; he is not the same any more."

"I'm sorry," Ciel says, and means it.

"Thank you for your compassion, but life is the way it is. There's no use railing at it, or at other people, or at God. It doesn't do a blind bit of good. I did do my fair share of railing at God at the time, asking if I hadn't served Him well enough for Him to spare my family. But who am I to know if He might not have allowed my wife and my daughter to leave this world fairly quickly then because He knew they might suffer greatly later, and chose to save them worse pain? I don't know. But I know for certain that there are wiser souls than I in the world, and if He who made us all is wiser even than them, who am I to say that I know better?"

"You are a wiser man than you think, Mister Jarvis," Sebastian remarks.

"Not at all. I'm still learning much. On the night I met you, I was still stuck in certain old ways, thinking that I was right in certain things and other people were wrong. But I was humbled greatly that evening, when I learnt that God may even use a devil to do some little good in my life. That _is_ what you are? Pardon me if I am mistaken."

"I am amazed you could assume that, and still invite me into your home, and offer me tea," Sebastian says. He sounds rather amused.

"People may think me foolish, but I have learnt to consider each individual, human or cat or otherwise, on his own merits. You have not threatened me with harm or attempted to sway my beliefs, and have only sought help for a child whose welfare you appear to truly care about. Why should I not invite you into my home?"

"You are much too kind," Ciel murmurs, staring into his empty teacup. The tea may have been plain and rather rough on the palate, nothing fancy, but it had a real taste, and he truly feels fortified by it.

"More tea, Your Lordship?" the vicar asks.

"Thank you very much, but we have imposed on you for too long as it is."

"It is very late," Sebastian agrees, looking at his pocket watch. "You must have been ready to retire when I came banging on your door. Thank you for your kindness, and your hospitality, and for praying for my master far better than I ever could."

"You are most welcome," Jarvis replies simply.

Sebastian rewraps Ciel in the coat, lifts him into his arms, and steps outside. On the doorstep, he bows to the vicar and Ciel nods, then they are off, over the wall of the churchyard, over the trees and rooftops.

"Stop at the town house, Sebastian," Ciel says once they are away.

"Why?"

"The horses – they've been there all day. I can't believe the hour. It wasn't long past noon when Ambrose and Carsten surprised us, and now it's nine o'clock. Were we trapped in that forest for so long?"

"Perhaps we perceived time a little differently in the rift that opened when the spell was disrupted," Sebastian replies. He does not say that every second there felt like an hour. "Are you sure you want to collect the horses?"

"It wouldn't be right to leave them there overnight with no water or food. They are in the stalls, aren't they?"

"Yes. I didn't know how long you would look at those papers, so I unharnessed them."

"At least they haven't been strapped to the carriage all day."

"I must warn you that if I detect so much as a hint of Ambrose or Carsten near the town house, I will turn right around and head for the manor at once, without the horses. At least the other servants can help look after you there. I suspect that Finny, with his ridiculous strength, would not be held back by any spell, however powerful."

Ciel allows himself a tiny smile as he pictures the gardener cheerfully tearing loose from everything Ambrose throws at him. "I should have listened to you this morning when you recommended returning to the manor instead of going to the town house."

"Oh – is that an apology, my lord?"

Ciel gives a little growl, but does not deny it.

"So you _will_ heed my advice this time if I should sense either of them nearby?"

"Hmm."

"I shall consider that as a 'yes', which you are failing to articulate because the trauma you have suffered has numbed your tongue."

"Shut up."

They reach the town house, and Sebastian sets Ciel down on his feet at the gate.

"Are they gone?" the earl whispers.

"There is no sign of them, or of their magic, except for remnants of the disrupted spell."

"Are you sure?"

"Very sure. Whatever traces of magic remain in the house are broken elements. A lot of damage has been done – not just to the spell Ambrose wove. I believe Carsten has torn loose from his chains. What scent of that devil lingers here is strong, different from what it was before."

Sebastian does not let Ciel leave his side as he leads the horses out and harnesses them to the carriage. He keeps him closer when they enter the house briefly to glance round the foyer – the spot from where they were sucked into the shadow of Ambrose's spell. He picks up the box that holds Mey-Rin's new eyeglasses and slips them into his coat pocket, grabs the earl's coat, then ushers Ciel out of the house and locks the door after them.

He leads the horses out past the gate, helps his master into his coat, sees him into the carriage, secures the gate, and quickly drives away. The whole time, he keeps his senses tuned to any scent, sound or shift in the magical or spiritual elements around them that might indicate the presence of either Ambrose or Carsten, but nothing emerges to trouble them.

To his surprise, when they are halfway across the city, what does interrupt his drive is the voice of the earl from within the carriage: "Sebastian."

Convinced that the boy has been seized by a sudden return of sickness, Sebastian veers to the side of the street, pulls on the reins, jumps out of the box seat and opens the carriage door. "What has happened? Are you unwell?"

But Ciel only looks calmly at him and says: "Let me out. I want to sit in the driver's seat with you."

"Why would you want to do that?" the butler asks, curiously.

"I want... to talk."

"Can it not wait till we return to the manor?"

"Yes, but we have time now. I would prefer to talk as we drive."

"You will attract unnecessary attention by doing that. We are still along a rather busy city street, and it is not a foggy night. What would people think, seeing a young nobleman riding in the box seat beside his driver?"

"Let them make of it what they will," Ciel replies.

"Very well. But it will be cold for you up there. I cannot have you falling ill again. I must put my coat over you."

"What would people think, seeing the Phantomhive coach go by driven by a butler in only his waistcoat and shirt?" Ciel asks.

"Let them make of it what they will," he echoes with a smirk. He bundles the boy into his coat and carries him up onto the driver's seat, where he places him carefully beside him, on his left.

"Things look so different from here," Ciel murmurs, looking around at other carriages and hansom cabs and people on foot on the pavements.

"So _that_ is what you came up here to say?" Sebastian remarks archly.

Ciel clicks his tongue in annoyance. "I am beginning to wonder if I shouldn't have let Ambrose do as he pleased with you after all."

"Shall we look for him and ask him to reconcoct that spell, Young Master?"

"Idiot."

Ciel is quiet for some minutes, looking out curiously from this new vantage point at the London streets by night. Not wishing to disturb his observations, Sebastian refrains from provoking him, and they sit side by side in peaceful silence until Ciel at last feels ready to say what he wants to:

"I told the vicar that I would not forget what he did for me tonight. He directs the praise towards God, but I chose to forget God three years ago, and I do not know how to regard this sign that He has not forgotten me. I cannot deal sensibly with something like that. I can only do what is within my power to thank the vicar, who has not rejected God despite his own grievances. So I simply say that I will not forget what Jarvis has done tonight. I wish also to say to you that neither will I ever forget what you have done for me tonight."

"I was able to do very little. You should not be speaking thus to someone who was so incompetent."

"You did everything you could. I know you did. I heard some of what was going on while half-conscious – I felt what you felt. I didn't know you could feel that much."

"You only heard snatches," Sebastian remarks, recalling his own despair and wondering how much the boy really remembers of their hours in the nowhere-world. "How do you know that the rest of the time, I wasn't making wicked deals with Ambrose and Carsten to prepare some worse fate for you?"

Ciel glares at him and mutters: "Because I know you wouldn't. Not any more. This tells me all I need to know."

To the butler's surprise, Ciel reaches out and takes his left hand. The devil transfers the reins to his right hand and lets him hold his left. The boy examines the back of that hand, the dark fingernails and the near-complete absence of the familiar symbol from the skin.

"What does it tell you?" Sebastian asks, looking ahead at the road, refraining from glancing at the dark head beside his left arm.

"It tells me that you stayed with me because you chose to, not because you had to, and not to hurt me or use me, but to help me when no one else could or would."

Ciel holds that pale, warm hand for a while before becoming aware of how long he has been studying it. Once more, he colours, and quickly lets go. He stares straight ahead, forcing himself not to turn and look at his butler.

Sebastian grasps the reins with both his hands again to steer the carriage smoothly through an intersection and up another road that takes them out of the busiest parts of London. The streets grow quieter, and the gas lamps dimmer, and the carriages they pass fewer.

"Why did you do what you did to protect me?" Sebastian asks.

Ciel takes some time to answer, saying at last: "I didn't want you to suffer as Carsten did. I didn't want you enslaved like that."

"Why not? It would have been to your advantage, and in the eyes of mortals, one such as I would deserve no better."

"You didn't lie to me even in that dire moment, when anyone else would have lied to save themselves. You hid some things from me before, but you didn't lie. I could not accept Ambrose's belief that you deserved nothing more or less. You can be the filthiest, most untrustworthy bastard, but you are the only one I would trust in the worst of times. At that moment, I realised that even if it would mean my destruction, I wouldn't want you any other way than the way you have always been."

"Do you think so even now, when our contract hangs by a thread?"

"All the more now, knowing that you saved me when you were under no obligation to."

"So, my lord, will you retain my services as they are, or do you wish to restore this tottering covenant by re-entering a contract with me?"

"Are you going to issue any more threats like those you uttered on the devils' island, to tell me how my life would not be worth living if we were not in a contract?"

"No," the devil replies softly.

"And why would you stay with me when you do not have to?" Ciel questions.

"I am still employed as your butler, am I not?" Sebastian asks mock-seriously. "Surely you would not dismiss me over something as trivial as a contract."

" _Trivial_?" Ciel gasps disbelievingly.

Sebastian ignores his little outburst and continues: "Besides, what would you do without me? I believe I would be hard to replace, as I am also your valet, bodyguard, housekeeper, head chef, regular driver, chief gardener, and – considering Mister Tanaka's condition – your acting steward as well."

Ciel glares at him out of the corners of his eyes and asks suspiciously: "Are you asking for an increase in your wages?"

"Perhaps I am," Sebastian muses playfully. "Is it negotiable?"

"Are we discussing _money_ wages?"

"Are other kinds of wages under consideration?" the devil questions in a light voice. "Surely you are not proposing that you should sell me your soul?"

"I suppose you think that's a joke."

"I beg your pardon if you find my sense of humour disagreeable. Carsten may tell better jokes than I do. Shall I ask him to enter your service?"

"If you do, I shall be sure to make you under-butler to him," Ciel retorts.

"Oh, the horror," Sebastian intones, tongue-in-cheek.

"Hmph," Ciel huffs, sparing him a sideway glare before staring determinedly up the road.

They gradually leave the city proper and enter the quiet country and forest roads that will take them towards the Phantomhive manor. While ensuring that he keeps his senses attuned to danger, Sebastian also remains keenly aware of the spiritual aura, physical breathing and tiny movements of the boy beside him.

When he judges that the moment is right, he asks: "Do you remember reaching up to touch my face when we were trapped in the world behind the spell?"

That Ciel does not answer for the longest time tells Sebastian he does remember.

"Were you trying to hit me, pat me like a dog, or caress me?" the butler queries.

"I was trying to flick a fly off your face," the boy replies, deadpan.

"Liar. There were no flies in that place."

"It must have been a beetle."

" _Dreadful_ liar."

If Ciel were the kind of child who knew how to chortle and snicker cheekily, he would be doing it now. But mirth has become such a stranger to him that he only knows how to twitch the corners of his mouth in a minuscule smirk laced with a touch of embarrassment.

It is enough for Sebastian. He lets their latest exchange sit in the charged – but not uncomfortable – silence between them for a while before he transfers the reins to his right hand again and holds out his left to the boy, palm up.

Ciel gives no indication that he has noticed the gesture. He neither turns his head nor moves his eyes. But as the carriage goes smoothly round a bend, he slips his right hand into his butler's left and leaves it there.

Sebastian closes his fingers gently but firmly over the small hand in his own.

"You told Jarvis you would not forget what he had done for you tonight," says the devil. "You told me you would not forget what I did for you tonight. I now wish to tell you that for as long as I exist, I shall not forget what you did for me today."

He lifts Ciel's hand to his lips and presses a kiss to it. He expects the boy to pull away, but he does not. On the contrary, he shifts on the box seat to be closer to Sebastian, so that when the butler lowers his arm again, those clasped hands rest half on Sebastian's left thigh and half on Ciel's right knee, and there they remain, together, for the rest of that ride.


	21. Interest

The minutes following their return to the manor pass in a haze of sound and movement for Ciel. He slips his hand out of Sebastian's as they enter the driveway proper, and the butler whips out a handkerchief to tie over Ciel's face as a makeshift eyepatch. Although both his eyes look fairly normal now, that makes it all the harder to explain why he has covered one for three years. Sebastian dons a spare pair of gloves he keeps in a pocket, to hide his black nails.

A flurry of activity washes around the earl like a wave once he is lifted down from the box seat, as Finny hastens to carry out Sebastian's orders to give the horses water and food, Mey-Rin squeals over the new eyeglasses through which she realises – by the light of the lamp Tanaka holds – that Sebastian is much handsomer up close than she had hitherto realised, Baldroy asks why they are so late when they had said earlier that they would return by dinnertime, and Tanaka tries to discreetly observe if the young master has been injured again in yet another adventure.

Ciel is fussed over by a grateful Mey-Rin, unwrapped by Sebastian from his oversized coat, smiled at by Tanaka once the old man sees he is moving easily and looks unharmed, and scrutinised by a less trusting Baldroy who is not as readily convinced as the steward that nothing is wrong with the earl.

But all he can think about is what it really meant when he put his hand into Sebastian's. He knew when he did it that he was saying he accepted the way things were now, he was no longer angry with him, and he trusted him. However, he is vague about the details of his unspoken message. Has he given tacit approval to his butler to take further the little touches he had given him before? He colours at the memory of Sebastian's blunt admission about the prostitute last night – was it only last night? It seems a world away.

Nervousness and curiosity clash in him as he wonders what it will be like upstairs tonight – how the devil will undress him, bathe him, and touch him... he has never felt this ambivalent anticipation about interacting with Sebastian in his bedroom, though his uncertainty makes him all the keener to know. He wants to know–

"Baldroy," Sebastian's warm voice breaks in on Ciel's thoughts. "Would you please help His Lordship with his bath tonight, while I prepare his supper?"

Ciel stares at Sebastian.

"Sure," the chef says cautiously, knowing how displeased Sebastian was to have been displaced as valet last night. "Though I could just as well prepare the food while you see to the master's bath."

"I will see to the master's meal. Your cooking has improved, but not as yet to the level I expect for making a light, yet palatable and nourishing dish for His Lordship. Young Master, you have eaten nothing solid since the bread rolls in the carriage this morning. I must make you something. Please allow Baldroy to be valet again tonight."

The earl is surprised, but refrains from showing it. He feels disappointed. He had been wondering what it would be like...

"Come on, Your Lordship. You're stuck with me again," Baldroy, half brightly, half self-deprecatingly, as Mey-Rin runs for hot water from the kitchen.

Ciel nods, says nothing, and goes upstairs as if it matters not to him either way. Once in his room, he replaces Sebastian's handkerchief with one of the spare eyepatches from the drawer of his bedside table before he allows Baldroy to start undressing him.

The man is conscientious and cheerful in an understated way – and nothing at all like Sebastian. No deeper layers of meaning rest behind the way he takes off Ciel's coat, and works his way down through the waistcoat, shirt, cravat, suspenders, vest, shorts, drawers and stockings. Everything is what it is on the surface. He is purely a man who is loyal to and fond of him, but has no particularly profound interest in him beyond the wish to protect him from harm, serve him well, and put years of lost smiles back on his face.

In short, Baldroy is not attracted to him. Not as a potential meal, or as a show horse to be groomed to triumph over others, or as a lover. He is merely a grown man who would cheerfully give a boy a bath because he occupies a world where it is perfectly natural for men and boys not to care about one another's nudity as everyone has the same "things"; a world where the worst scandal would be for a man to see a respectable _woman_ in a state of undress.

He saw the brand-mark on Ciel's back last night, but said nothing about it. The servants know that the original manor was destroyed in an inferno in which Ciel's parents perished and from which Ciel himself was stolen, so he probably assumes that the mark comes from his having fallen against something metallic and hot in that same fire. He most likely asks no questions about it because he does not wish to reopen old wounds. The earl hid that mark from everyone except Sebastian for three years, but Mrs Easton saw it, and her men saw it, and in the end, it meant nothing any more that they had – it has become an old matter, as dead as the renegade angel Ash who answered neither to heaven nor hell.

Ciel's mind drifts as he is wrapped in the bathrobe while Mey-Rin mixes the hot water from the kitchen with the cold from the tap. He drifts further into thought once she withdraws, and he steps into the bath. As Baldroy washes his hair without displacing the eyepatch strings, Ciel recalls his recovery from what had felt like the brink of death.

He had been asleep in the worst way – unable to move or speak, but drifting into and out of awareness of sounds and movement. He had felt Sebastian's urgency and protectiveness. But at the same time, as if his eyes were turned inward, he had seen a gaping hole inside himself where the lance had pierced him, and his life leaking from it. Sebastian's naturally dark energy, despite its absence of malice towards him, was nonetheless draining life through the hole in his soul, or spirit.

Then darkness.

After what felt like an age came a gradual lightening. His eyes looked inward again to find Sebastian's dark energy gone, the hole closing up, and his life force being drawn back into himself, as his ears became aware of someone speaking over him softly. Gentle words. Simple words. Strings of words and phrases he had never known as part of his own life, but had heard second-hand, or from a distance. _Heavenly Father, I do not know what ails this child, but if you will, please help him. You have the power, not I. I ask for your mercy for him..._

The same essential request couched in different ways, over and over, until the words, or the feeling behind them, seemed to loosen the unseen shackles that paralysed his body and tongue. Or perhaps it was the mere absence of Sebastian's dark aura that naturally brought about healing – he could not tell. His eyes then seemed to turn outward as the hole inside him was slowly repaired, and he blinked to see a vaguely familiar face. His movement prompted the man to open his eyes also, whisper a _Thank you, Father_ , and to ask him: "How do you feel?"

He had stared at the man, stared hard until he placed that face, and asked: "Where is Sebastian?"

"Do you mean your butler, Your Lordship?" Jarvis had responded. "He brought you here. He was most anxious for you."

"Has he left? Did he leave me?"

"I believe he is waiting outside. I shall call him in momentarily. But before I do, please assure me that it was not he who caused you to fall into that dangerous slumber. If he harmed you, I will turn him away from my house."

"With what? A broomstick?" Ciel had sighed. "Mister Jarvis – it _is_ Mister Jarvis, is it not?"

"Yes."

"You couldn't turn him away with an army. But he wasn't the one who hurt me. He tried to save me."

"I had to ask, because of what you said to me that night, about not trusting him."

"Things have changed."

"Then I shall bring him in at once."

Ciel had felt convinced that the vicar would go out to find Sebastian gone – gone forever. But he had returned with him, and for a good few seconds, Ciel had not known what to say...

His attention is drawn back to the present by Baldroy working the washcloth over his back. He senses that the chef is discreetly ascertaining that nothing in him is broken or damaged.

"I'm fine, Baldroy," he mutters.

"Well, Your Lordship, I had to be sure – you often don't say when you're not."

"Nothing was damaged that wasn't fixed within hours."

"Good to know," the man continues wiping and washing him, without the least suggestive intent in his touch. A wipe is a wipe, a touch is a touch, no more. With Sebastian, a wipe could be a caress, a touch the careful stroking of the most fragile bird or rose petal, a hint of more to come.

Ciel realises that he misses that very _intent_ in Sebastian's touch. It has been absent for some days, since he said "No" to his advances. But why does he want it now?

It comes to him – not a recollection of words alone, or deeds alone, but a wave of sensation flooding his psyche and emotions with how desperately Sebastian had tried to save him. He was unconscious through much of it, but he cannot forget nor can he mistake the passionate words he heard, the way the devil held him close as if he meant everything to him.

He has a powerful sense of having been protected – not in the dutiful but mocking way of times past, when Sebastian would make fun of him for being absolutely useless even while he was whisking him away from danger. No, this was different. He was protected fiercely, uncompromisingly, with every fibre of his butler's demonic being.

The details are vague, but his awareness of Sebastian's emotions is clear, and he _wants_ that passion. He does not know what the final upshot will be – what _exactly_ it means – but he desires it.

He suddenly wishes to see Sebastian now. Here, with him. He could try summoning him, to see if what remains of the covenant still links them that way, but he is half-afraid to know the truth. So he chooses not to vocalise his name, or call to him in his mind.

He waits until his bath is over, and Baldroy has dried him off, wrapped him up and dressed him in his long nightshirt and drawers. As the man cleans up in the bathroom, the bedroom door opens, and Sebastian enters. Ciel is torn between not taking his eyes off him and looking away self-consciously precisely because he had been aching to see him.

"Young Master, I hope this will fill you adequately without disturbing your sleep," the butler says, placing before him a flawlessly fluffy omelette with an aroma that tells of cheese, butter and nutty-flavoured mushrooms melting within its folds.

Ciel discovers how very hungry he is as he takes the first forkful of the omelette. It is smooth, rich enough without being cloying, light without being insubstantial, and as satisfying as the finest, cream-filled savoury crepes Sebastian has ever made him.

Baldroy emerges from the bathroom with empty pails, nods as he exits the bedroom, and closes the door. As he leaves, Sebastian pours a cup of chamomile tea for Ciel and sets it on the small table. "Is the omelette to your liking, Young Master?"

"It's perfect," he answers, putting away another mouthful.

"I made you no sweets tonight because they would interfere with your sleep. But I shall make you all the dessert you want tomorrow."

"Chocolate cream truffles dusted with cocoa powder?"

"Chilled and ready in time for elevenses."

"Meringues – crumbly on the outside but chewy on the inside."

"Enough to last you all day."

"A cake after dinner. Anything. Surprise me."

"Of course, my lord."

Ciel finishes the omelette and drinks half a cup of the tea, and Sebastian removes the small table with the plates on it from the bedside.

"What did it really mean, when you held your hand out to me?" Ciel asks, suddenly.

"You took my hand without knowing what it meant?" Sebastian teases, placing the used crockery and cutlery on the wheeled server.

Ciel flushes. "I meant it as a gesture of peace. I did it to say I wasn't angry with you any more for... last night, and I would be pleased for you to remain with me whether we are in a contract or not."

"Then that is just what it meant," he replies.

"Is that all?" Ciel asks.

"Do you want there to be more?"

"No – I mean... I just wanted to know."

"In this matter, your wishes are mine," he says, removing the eyepatch whose strings are soaked from the hair-washing. "I know better now than to attempt to seduce you to my way of thinking as I did before. That is part of a devil's arrogance – the assumption that it is not only possible but fitting to woo another to accommodate our desires. Think no more of it. You are significant to me in other ways besides that which I alluded to."

"But..." Ciel begins, stopping himself when he thinks he might sound like a whining child.

"Young Master?"

"Nothing. Is everything secure around the manor?"

"I am keeping my senses tuned to anything that may approach. I was complacent on the day Vanel's men abducted you, but I have been alert since then. Have no fear. Neither Ambrose nor Carsten will come near us tonight without my knowing it well before they arrive."

"What will you do even if you anticipate their arrival? We were helpless against them today."

"I am certain that they have parted ways. Carsten will not let himself be recaptured so easily. Without him, Ambrose's power is significantly reduced, and I am confident that I can take him on one-to-one. Besides, he may not live much longer without his devil to draw supernatural life forces from. As for Carsten, free of Ambrose's control, why would he bother us at all? So sleep well, and soundly. Before you know it, you will be opening your eyes to the daylight and your morning tea. Shall I stay here with you until you fall asleep?"

"I... no, that's not necessary," Ciel says, hiding his mixed feelings about things simply returning to the way they were before – before the spell, before the heated exchange in the laundry room, before the little touches, before the four kisses and one slap... "If anything happens, I can always call for you. Or is the contract too damaged?"

"It may have weakened, but it is not destroyed. I still feel the essential link between us. If you call for me, I will hear you, and be with you in an instant, wherever you are."

"But the connection isn't as strong? You won't know what I'm thinking."

"I've never known what you were thinking. Devils do not have the power to read minds. If we did, we would be omniscient. I have never been able to read your mind, except that the contract allowed me to know when you were summoning me. Everything else I know about you, my anticipation of your actions and thoughts, has been no more than an observant human with good instincts attuned to your character would know. What I know about your mind comes from centuries of observation of your species, years of knowing you as an individual, instinct, and intelligence. So nothing is lost. Call for me, and I will be there. That much of the contract remains intact."

"I see."

"Perhaps you should sleep with this?" Sebastian remarks, stepping away from the bedside to take something out of the oak cabinet. It is one of the toy rabbits that the Funtom company sent over as samples for approval. The baby rabbit.

"I thought those samples were sent back to the company," Ciel says.

"I retained them, at least for now, because I thought even at the time what a pity it was that you had no toys at all. You must have had many only three years and three months ago. I apologise for having tried to make you grow up too fast. On the contrary, I should perhaps have encouraged you to regress a little."

Sebastian tucks the baby rabbit under the blanket along with Ciel, and the earl glares at him. "Do you not think I would have to regress a _lot_ to be young enough for _this_?"

"Even when you are ninety-nine years old, you will still seem too young for too many things, to one such as me. There is no hurry. I will wait for whatever you wish to share with me, if at all. Good night, young master."

The butler snuffs the flame in the glass lamp, wheels the serving tray out of the room, and leaves. Some flames burn in the fireplace, but they will die soon. Ciel picks up the toy and stares at it. Tucking him in with a plush baby rabbit? _An unpardonable insult._ If that devil thinks he is going to be a meek little child from now, he should think again. Sebastian is doing this years too late. Ciel Phantomhive knows how to sell toys that delight countless children across the globe, but all the toys in the world cannot bring back what was lost of his own childhood. All he can do is to move forward, and make his future better than his recent past.

He puts the rabbit down and gets out of bed.

***

Sebastian closes and locks the door of his own bedroom. His instincts are hissing at him to never let Ciel out of his sight again, to remain with him every day and every night. But once he sensed that Ciel wanted him to stay in his bedroom, he quickly decided to resume their normal routine at once. Left to its own devices, his possessive inclination would be to press endless kisses to the boy's hair, face, lips, throat, everything, everywhere.

He can wait for him. He has all the time in the world to wait.

He sheds his butler's guise and transforms into his naturally unnatural self – that which no one looking upon could mistake as anything other than completely demonic. He paces his room in his sleek boots with their sharp heels, stilling his urges. Ironically, he cannot so easily be surprised by his impulses when he is wearing no facade; perhaps not having to pretend to be something other than what he is gives him fuller control over himself.

He must not stay in the boy's bedroom all night. Who could say what would happen if he did, now that Ciel appears keen to be in his company? He must not woo him further. Let that kiss on the back of his hand be no more than a kiss of allegiance; their sitting close together on the box seat nothing more than a promise of protection...

Sebastian abruptly stops in his tracks and swivels his head towards the closed door of his bedroom as his senses alert him to something completely unexpected.

_Why is he here?_

***

Ciel, in a pair of velvet carpet slippers he did not even know he owned until he started digging about the bottom of his wardrobe to find something less noisy than his usual shoes but warmer than socks, moves quietly through the below-stairs corridors.

When he was small, he had often played hide-and-seek with Lizzie and Sebastian the hound, and sometimes a mischievous Aunt An, in the rooms of the house that the earl's family were supposed to not even know the locations of. Noblemen, their wives and their children would ordinarily never be expected to know where their own kitchens, laundry rooms, pantries and servants' rooms were located. They ceded governance of those domains to their butlers and housekeepers. But children would be children, and Ciel had played where he could get away with it. In the first and second rebuildings of the manor, he had specified to Sebastian that everything must be the way it had been before, and personally approved many details. He is therefore aware of the position and function of every room in his mansion, upstairs and down.

As he approaches Sebastian's isolated bedroom at the end of the passageway, he senses a dark flow of energy – the same he had felt while he and the devil were trapped in the "shadow of the spell", as Carsten called it. He has never been able to detect such energy before, and wonders if he has established some unusual connection with Sebastian since their experience in the nowhere-world. It is a dark force, but like before, it appears not to be aimed against him.

Boldly, he walks up to the room and is about to knock when the spiritual darkness vanishes, and his butler opens the door.

"Did I fail to hear you summon me?" Sebastian asks the boy, with genuine surprise.

"No. I didn't summon you."

"Then why are you here?"

"I thought I would go to you, for once, instead of having you come to me."

"You should have called for me. You will catch a chill wandering about like that."

Ciel only has a light dressing gown over his nightshirt and drawers.

"Let me take you back upstairs at once."

"No. I want to be here. With you."

Sebastian considers the small figure on his threshold, then lets him in. He locks the door, sits him down on his simple bed, and drapes the blanket over his shoulders to keep him warm. The butler's bed is lower than the earl's, so when his thin legs dangle over the side of the mattress from the knees down, his toes nearly touch the floor. Nearly, but not quite. Enough of a gap remains for the carpet slippers to fall off his feet and drop softly to the boards.

"Are you here to complain that Baldroy did not do a good job with your bath? What has he forgotten to wash?" Sebastian teases as he checks behind Ciel's ears.

"Stop that," Ciel grumbles, batting his hands away.

"Or did he perhaps do much too good a job? Did you get lost on your way to his bedroom to tell him that he would replace me as your valet from here on?"

"Don't be absurd," Ciel scowls.

"No fever?" Sebastian asks, resting his hand against Ciel's forehead.

"No," the earl mutters, remembering how he had offered to kiss Sebastian the night he was sick and delirious, and instantly becomes self-conscious as he suddenly wishes he knew what _that_ would be like...

To deflect attention from himself, he quickly adds a question of his own: "What were you doing before you opened the door to me? I could feel this strange energy."

"And you were not afraid of it?" the butler questions.

"It was dark, but not malicious. Not towards me, at any rate. Like in that strange forest – darkness affecting me, without intending to hurt."

"You were never able to sense it before that?"

"No. Has something changed because of what Ambrose did?"

"Perhaps."

"So what were you doing?"

"I was being myself."

"You mean..."

"Do you remember when I first came to you? I have not appeared before you in that form since we entered a contract, as I thought it unseemly to present myself thus before a master who demanded only perfection. But if you want to remember what I am, to know what you are keeping around you, you may wish to look upon me with open eyes."

"Show me."

Sebastian transforms, shaking off his mortal facade, and stands there before Ciel with his glowing, wine-red eyes whose irises are feline slits; his skin-tight, glossy, black leather-like costume tapering into boots with high, pointed heels; his mouth full of tiny, uneven fangs; an airy, shifting cloak of dark feathers.

Ciel's breath catches as the demon walks towards him, heels clicking smartly on the floorboards, and stops beside the bed, then crouches before him so their faces are level.

"Well, little master?" the devil asks. "Little one who holds me by a covenant that hangs by a thread, but a thread so powerful that I find myself chained to you by my choice and will? Do you want me in your house, in your life?"

The earl gazes back at the beautiful, terrible thing before him, then answers by leaning forward to touch his lips to his mouth. He trembles as he does so, but brings the frisson of nervousness quickly under control.

The devil savours that brief contact, one mouth to another, and comprehends what it means, why the boy is here. He smiles as he transforms back into his butler's guise.

"No slap to follow?" Sebastian asks, understanding that he now has permission to proceed with what he had thought he would have to wait longer for.

"Are you asking for one?" Ciel retorts, with slightly more confidence than he feels. He wonders which of the demon's two personas he prefers. Sebastian the butler is more familiar and easier on the eyes, but the cat-eyed devil in the skin-tight leather and heels is intriguing and seductive.

"I did promise while you were unconscious that you could hit me all you pleased when you recovered," he says.

"I begin to suspect that you enjoy being struck," the earl remarks.

"I assure you that is untrue. I very much prefer being the one to mete out the punishment. Indeed, if you were not my employer, I would punish you for being reckless enough to throw yourself in front of that lance for me. To make certain you would never do such a thing again, I would take you over my knee and spank you for your impulsiveness." Sebastian flickers between his butler's and leather-clad demon's selves as he speaks.

"You would be wise _not_ to attempt any such thing," Ciel declares, drawing himself up and glaring at Sebastian with a good deal of haughtiness and a hint of alarm. "Don't you ever dare strike me, or I will dismiss you at once. What would you do with no wages to pay _prostitutes_ with?"

"You are striking fear into my heart," this spoken sardonically by the butler.

"Says the heartless devil."

"If I were heartless, you would not be here."

"If you had a heart, you would not have considered destroying me before."

"I considered it as you no doubt have considered strangling people you care for in moments of frustration. I did not, in the end, do it."

"Good thing too, or you'd be out of a job by now."

"If I were so inclined, I could find new employment by morning. You, however, would take at least six months to hire enough staff to replace me."

"Six months of hiring would not deter me from giving you the sack, if I feel justified in doing it."

"Really? Not only would you need a butler, housekeeper, valet and army of bodyguards to replace me, but another steward as well. Tanaka simply cannot cope."

"Oh? Then what was that absurd suggestion last night about training Tanaka to see to my baths and dressing? Apart from his absence of mind, he's the Phantomhive _steward_. In the strictest sense, he's not really even considered a _servant_ , unlike you. A valet's tasks would be beneath him."

"Your Lordship, I handle almost all of his steward's duties. I do not think it would be too much to ask for him to take over some of mine. He was quite pleased to help prepare breakfast that day when the Easton gang was laying siege to the manor, so I did not think he would mind washing and dressing you until we could find a suitable valet."

"Ridiculous. He would probably forget what he was doing, imagine I was a plant he was soaking, and end up drowning me in the bathtub."

"Fear not. Baldroy will surely come to your rescue. You would like that, wouldn't you?"

Ciel stares at him. The stare turns into a glare, which finds further expression in a growl and a throwing-off of the blanket over him. "Fine," he mutters. "If that's how you're going to be, I shall impose on you no longer. I am going back to my room–"

"Not until you do what you came here to do," Sebastian purrs, keeping him seated right where he is by planting his hands on the bed, on either side of him.

"I _did_ do what I came here to do," Ciel protests, perched on the edge of the mattress.

"No, you did not. I believe you came here to give me a kiss."

"Which I did."

"That wasn't a kiss. That was a peck."

"It _was_ a kiss," Ciel growls.

"Nowhere close."

"Then what _is_?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Why else would I ask?"

"Try again. I'll tell you if it's a kiss or not."

Ciel glowers at him before he leans forward once more and touches his lips to Sebastian's, pressing a little harder, lingering a few seconds more. Then he draws back, naively saying with a self-satisfied air: "There – you can't tell me that wasn't a–"

He is cut off as Sebastian covers his mouth with his in a manner quite different from his own restrained offering. One hand cradles his head, the other the small of his back, pulling him firmly towards him. Ciel almost squeaks in surprise, eyes wide open, staring fuzzily at Sebastian's impossibly close face. His eyelids fall as his head starts to swim, but a flick of the devil's tongue against his lips makes his eyes fly open again. He emits a stifled gasp, and feels that tongue probing, asking, until it is inside his mouth, tasting him, teasing him into answering with his own tongue – cautiously at first, then curiously, then with a determination to respond in kind. That is when he feels it – a deep stirring of pleasure that provokes a startling reaction in his groin. He feels himself stiffening _down there_ , becoming so tense and tight that he wants to press himself against something – no, not just something but specifically _Sebastian_ – and not only slips his arms around the demon's neck to pull him closer, but even wraps his legs around his waist.

It is Sebastian's turn to exhale a low murmur of surprise into Ciel's mouth. Both his hands dip under the boy's bottom and lift him up and back towards the centre of the bed, while his own body follows, until he is partially lying on top of Ciel, taking the weight of his torso on his elbows while keeping his feet on the floor.

Ciel's hips thrust upward, eagerly pressing his hardness against Sebastian's belly. He has sometimes felt his private parts stiffen in the mornings when he wakes up, or in the night, but only in the most normal way that his father had once very briefly told him about when he asked: _It happens to all little boys, and men._ It has never felt anything like this – this urgent need to rub his penis against his butler, even crush it between his own body and that of the male on top of him.

Sebastian is the one who tears his lips away from Ciel's, whispering: "Slowly, Young Master. There is no need to rush."

"Mmm," Ciel protests breathlessly, disengaging neither his arms nor legs from the demon.

"Now _that_ was a kiss, was it not?"

"Mm-hmm."

"You liked it, then?" the butler asks with a knowing smile.

Ciel whispers back his simple and direct order: "Do it again."

"It was not in my plans to kiss you at all tonight. I thought I explained that I was in no hurry?" Sebastian murmurs.

"But _I_ am," the earl says, surprising even himself with his clarity and certainty. "Humans are an impatient race. We have so little time."

Sebastian kisses him again with a curious sense of sadness, tasting the sweetness, spiciness and brilliance of him, tainted by the inevitability of death, for mortals never last very long when their years are measured against the lifespans of demons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art: This [drawing](http://aroturier.tumblr.com/post/48155140669) is Aservis Roturier's take on what Sebastian may look like in his demon form.


	22. Equality

In the night, Ciel dreams of many things. But the vision that comes before the dawn is the clearest: Sebastian pinning him face-down to the mattress, covering his unclothed body with his own, imprisoning his wrists, each kiss to the back of his neck firing near-unbearable shivers down his spine, the devil's knees nudging his thighs apart. He feels himself, in the dream, pushing his hips into the mattress, pressure building, escalating, until...

Uttering a soft moan, he wakes in his own bedroom, alone in his bed, suffused with satisfaction, although his still-sleepy mind wonders why that should be so, when they had done little last night. Certainly, _nothing_ like what happened in the dream transpired. Why does he feel so content when...

Oh dear God. What has his body done?

He becomes aware of a stickiness in his drawers, damp fabric clinging to his skin. With a feeling of dread, he raises the covers and looks down at himself, expecting anything from blood to pee to demon slime. But as he pries the waistband open and slips his hands inside his drawers, he concludes after some initial bewilderment that he has had a "nocturnal emission", a term he once heard in passing from Lau while the Chinese man was making bawdy jokes.

His fingers are now sticky from his having put his hands into his drawers, and... and...

The door opens. Sebastian enters with his morning tea, newspaper and water for washing.

"How unusual to find you already awake," the devil remarks, approaching the bed.

Ciel reflexively pulls the covers back over his body, his fingers now smearing the _stuff_ onto the blankets.

"Young Master?" Sebastian says curiously, setting down the tea tray, as his nose alerts him to something unusual.

"I wasn't– I didn't–" Ciel splutters, before realising how undignified he sounds. He draws a deep breath, exhales slowly, and says much more collectedly: "It's not what you might think."

Sebastian raises the covers, takes a long second to study the situation, helps Ciel out, and stands him beside the bed while he peels off his stained sleepwear.

"I wasn't _doing_ anything," the boy mumbles.

"It happens," Sebastian replies quietly. He is tempted to lick the cum off Ciel's body, but the boy is nowhere near ready for anything like that.

"You're not smirking," the earl observes suspiciously. "You always smirk when odd things happen to me."

"Why would I?" the butler asks as he wipes the thickest smears off his master with the already-stained drawers. "This is a natural occurrence. For human boys of adolescent age, at least."

"It's partly your fault, anyway," Ciel grumbles.

" _My_ fault?" he protests mildly. "But I didn't touch you."

"I _did_ say you could, last night, but you wouldn't," the boy mutters. He does not confess that his wet dream was of his butler, mounting him.

"You shouldn't be doing things you can barely communicate to me." He wipes Ciel clean with a cloth and warm water from the washbasin pitcher. "And it is not _my_ fault that you came looking for me after I left you here to sleep in peace. What better should an earl expect when he wanders about downstairs kissing the _servants_? Oh, the scandal." If he was not smiling before, he is now.

Ciel growls: "The covenant is moribund. You are no longer my servant but my equal."

"Is that so?" Sebastian asks playfully. "Didn't you say last night that Tanaka was not considered a servant, _unlike me_?"

"I was annoyed with you then. I didn't mean it."

"I am still your butler."

"You are an independent devil performing a butler's role. That makes everything different. Would I condescend to kiss anyone I did not consider my social equal?" he asks haughtily.

"As your equal, I should hardly be kneeling before you, cleaning ejaculate off your belly, should I?"

Ciel colours furiously.

Sebastian's lips part into a fang-filled grin. "Of course, equals often take pleasure in doing things for one another that they would normally consider beneath them. It pleases me to do this for you, and to call you my master."

The earl stares at that most un-butler-like grin and absorbs the fact that the devil before him is practically uncollared and unleashed, free to follow his whims. He has an odd sense of loss of control over a weapon he once wielded with ease, counterbalanced by the pleasure of knowing that something untamed has chosen to remain loyal to him.

The butler removes his soiled gloves, ties a dressing gown over the earl, and pours him a cup of tea. He pulls out a chair at the side table, has Ciel sit down, and gives him the morning newspaper before stripping off the bed linen.

"I shall return shortly with fresh linen, and to dress you, after I prepare these items for washing. Do not worry – I will not let Mey-Rin see the stains."

He exits before Ciel can blush or growl again, leaving him to think of last night.

The first surprise had been how tender Sebastian was to him, and how restrained. He had imagined a demonically ardent coupling driven by aggressive passion, but the demon had been unexpectedly gentle. They had locked lips and tangled tongues eagerly, and Ciel had been quite ashamed to hear himself panting like a dog when they broke apart after the second deep exploration of each other's mouths. Sebastian had nibbled his left ear and worked his way down to his throat, every kiss and lick searing his flesh, continuing to burn each inch of skin uncovered as the butler unbuttoned his nightshirt. Then he had undone his drawers and lowered his mouth to his belly...

And Ciel had panicked. After having strained against Sebastian's belly and hips like a puppy humping someone's leg, he had pulled back as if burnt not by kisses but by fire. Of all the times to be seized by the memory of what Mrs Easton's man had done to him at the mill, it had to be then.

Sebastian had stopped at once. "Forgive me," he had said, buttoning Ciel's clothing. "I should not have gone so far."

"It was just – I just..." Ciel had said hastily.

"I told you that I had not planned to kiss you at all tonight. This was taking it much too far."

The situation had then blown completely beyond Ciel's control when his irksome allergies prompted the first sneeze. Followed by another, bigger sneeze.

"Your bed is covered in cat hair, isn't it?" he had complained after he sneezed a third time, making Sebastian chuckle. "Damn it, don't laugh about this. Do you even sleep here at all? Or is it left to the cats?"

"I _do_ sleep here, almost every night," the devil had murmured as he finished buttoning the nightshirt and stroked his master's ruffled hair back into some semblance of order. "It is not essential for me, but sleep is a pleasure if I have no other duties while everyone else in the manor is abed. The cats, however, are free to use this piece of furniture when I allow them into my room."

"Thanks to that, I can't lie down here without sneezing."

"A moment, please." He had gathered Ciel into his arms, leaped off the bed, and in a trice covered it with the blanket he had earlier draped over him, then lain him down on it again. "This item is free of cat hair – I made sure of that before putting it over you earlier. Better?"

Ciel had given the blanket an exploratory sniff, failed to sneeze, and pronounced himself satisfied by burrowing into Sebastian's arms and resting his head against that comfortable spot on his chest beside his arm, just below the collarbone.

"Lift your head," Sebastian had said, and he had obeyed, only to have his butler whip out a handkerchief and wipe his nose with it.

"You're never going to stop treating me like a child," Ciel had sighed.

"More so at certain times than others. Your sneezes were well-timed. This truly is as far as we should go tonight."

"But–"

"You were given back to me mere hours ago, after I nearly lost you. I doubt that the one who gave you back to me returned you for the purpose of tossing you into bed with a devil. I should have remembered that."

"Don't go there. I don't want to hear about that. I only want to know all you have to teach me."

"What do you wish to learn from me?"

"I don't know. I want you to show me."

"You do not even know what you are asking for."

"I do," Ciel had said, lifting his head again to plant a kiss on Sebastian's throat, just above the stiff collar of his shirt – he is still clad in his white shirt and waistcoat.

"Hmm. I thought it was a devil's job to tempt humans, and here you are, tempting a demon most skilfully," Sebastian had remarked with a wry smile.

"Is it working?"

"You are nearly irresistible. But I learnt on the day I almost broke our contract to devour you in your bedroom that my capacity for self-control is not too shabby."

With that, Sebastian had risen, scooped him up, and carried him out of the room.

"What are you doing?" Ciel had demanded as his butler strode down the dark corridors with him in his arms.

"Returning you to your room, where you belong."

"Turn around."

"No."

"Or remain upstairs with me tonight."

"No. Hush, now, or you'll wake the servants. Do you want them to think you've been sleepwalking?"

Ciel had sulked as he was borne back upstairs and tucked under the covers – with the rabbit, again.

"You think you have little time, and perhaps that is true, but it is not so short that you must rush through everything. You have already learnt so much more than other children of your rank and years have. There _is_ time to slow down."

"If I die of an acute illness tonight you'll wish you had done all you wanted with me," Ciel threatens.

"If you die of an acute illness tonight, you will be grateful for not having indulged yourself with me as your last conscious act."

"Continue along that path of thought and you will be able to take over Mister Jarvis' duties at the pulpit."

"We'll make a wit of you yet."

"I'll make a scullery boy of _you_ yet."

Sebastian leans down and gives him a deep kiss before pulling back slowly, savouring the sweetness on his tongue. "Good night, Young Master."

Ciel had put the rabbit on the nightstand with a huff of irritation after Sebastian's departure, and stared up into the darkness over his bed. Only when his eyelids grew too heavy did he close his eyes. Then came the hours of dreaming, and _that_ dream, and the embarrassment that had followed as Sebastian came in with his morning tea.

The devil is opening the door again now, returning with the fresh bed linen. He also has a new washcloth, and more warm water. Ciel cleans his face and teeth, and lets Sebastian dress him.

"Today, you have a geography lesson with Professor Cox at ten in the morning, followed by a music lesson with Signor Ricco. At half-past one, the dance mistress, Madame Bright, is expected. The Latin tutor, Mister Ashworth, will conduct your final lesson of the day at three o'clock."

"I almost _died_ yesterday," Ciel growls. "Are you trying to kill me again today?"

Something that looks like pain flashes in Sebastian's garnet eyes. But it is gone in an instant, and the devil is smiling pleasantly again, saying: "Your Lordship will be sustained all day by the meringues and truffles you ordered last night, and rewarded for your hard work after dinner this evening by cake whose flavour will remain secret for now, also as ordered."

The flash of pain in his butler's eyes takes Ciel's words away. He has not thought, till this moment, that the memory of those hours of desperation could still haunt Sebastian. Is this keeping him from doing what he wants to with him because he fears further damaging or tainting what he thinks has been spared by God?

Ciel ponders the matter in silence as he descends the stairs for breakfast. Sebastian has prepared soft-boiled eggs with a sprinkling of pepper and a dash of dark Oriental soy sauce, followed by a fine Chinese rice gruel filled with tender strips of chicken, sprinkled with chopped shallots fried to a golden crisp. The food makes him think of Lau and Ran-Mao. He wonders if they are dead or alive. Fools. Chesspieces who wanted to leave the board and play the game themselves. Thinking of them leads him to also think of Madam Red, and Grelle.

"In between your lessons today," Sebastian says as he pours more Chinese tea for him. "You may wish to spare a few moments to think about Mrs Easton's words to us in the Tower. She said one of the magical practitioners she consulted was a strange man with red hair. Does that remind you of anyone?"

Ciel looks at Sebastian, startled. "I thought you said you couldn't read my mind."

"I can't."

"I was just thinking of Grelle."

"I did mean you to think of him among those in general who intend mischief, by preparing a breakfast that would remind you of Lau."

"You think that Grelle might have posed as a practitioner of magic to tell Mrs Easton about things I fear, based on what he may have seen of my records in the Soul Reapers' library?"

"Possibly. If it we discover that it was him, I shall hunt him down. This time, I may at last run him through with any scythe he carries, whether it is his illegal weapon, or those absurdly tiny pairs of scissors. With the scissors, he will take much longer to die, but that will amuse me."

"He'll be far too busy trying to make love to you to notice that you're killing him," Ciel grumbles.

"Does that make you jealous?"

"You wish it did."

"I know it does."

"Shut up, Sebastian."

"Yes, my lord." This time, the smirk is there.

Grelle, Aunt An and Lau had appeared allies to begin with, but turned against him and his. He has long gone far beyond wondering where to place his trust – he places it nowhere except in himself, and now, Sebastian – and instead asks how far he should maintain order without crossing the line into revenge purely for injured pride. He has avenged his darkest humiliation against the angel Ash, and in so doing, avenged his parents as well. Now, he asks if he should bother with Grelle, and how to label Ambrose and Carsten. Is Ambrose an ally who accidentally harmed him? Or was he trying to play his own game with him, Ciel, as his white king? Is Carsten a neutral entity, like an extra, unused piece that still lies in the box?

Throughout the geography lesson, he nibbles on perfect meringues, but cannot spare his hands in the violin class. Once he sets down his instrument and bow, he is hungry for the truffles Sebastian has promised he can have after his midday meal.

Those rich truffles gird him for the agonising dance lesson in which he treads four times on poor Madame Bright's toes, and glares frequently at a butler who pretends to be standing discreetly in the corner to be of service, but is really sniggering behind his gloved hand.

However, after Ciel has walked the lady to her carriage by way of demonstrating contrition for his clumsiness, and Sebastian has seen him back in and closed the door, the butler playfully seizes him by the waist and one hand and whirls him in a waltz across the expansive entrance hall before releasing him with a smirk and a kiss on the palm of his right hand. Ciel gasps in a perfect blend of surprise, annoyance and pleasure, none of which he can express in any coherent way, because the Latin tutor's gig is already pulling up outside.

A whole hour of conjugating verbs almost dissolves his brain, but at the end of it, the torture is over for the day, and he is at last able to sit down to a tea of scones with cream and butter, cucumber sandwiches and meringues, and to think some more.

If he had not panicked last night, Sebastian might be going beyond kisses and cheeky waltzes by now. Ciel is convinced he will be old by the time he and his butler both increase the tempo. But he is unsure how to negotiate on equal terms with this dangerous creature in his house whom he could once have commanded to do anything, like the best-trained hound, but now playfully strides beside him like the prince of wolves, a highly intelligent creature who willingly humours him when he thinks it appropriate, but can no longer be ordered to do anything against his will.

They must rework the rules of the game whose boundaries they operated within for three years, or move away from the board as they look hard at the ground their feet are treading. They may no longer be playing the same game, or any game. At least they are walking together, not playing against each other as they briefly did in the course of the second contract.

Before dinner, he strolls through his gardens with Finny watching over him from a reasonably discreet distance – although Finny being Finny means that the distance is not always discreet, and the peace is regularly punctuated by wails of distress as petunias, roses and daffodils are accidentally beheaded in a quest to destroy weeds. Ciel fortunately finds some measure of quiet in the sterling silver rose garden, for Sebastian has long trained the young man never to go near the master's favourite roses, unless the butler is there to prevent disaster.

The new variety of rose that Sebastian grew for him is blooming well. The lavender hue is so pale, and the grey hints so silvery, that the open flowers glow like peaceful ghosts in the evening light. Did he put away the first one given to him? Was it discarded by Sebastian once it wilted? There was so much internal and outward turmoil during that period, he can hardly remember what he did with it. Ah, yes, he did put it away. He had tied a blue ribbon to its stalk and hung it upside-down behind his bedside table to preserve it, during the two days before the storm broke over Sebastian's visit to the prostitute. If he had not forgotten that he had hung up the flower, he would have shredded it in a temper that night.

"Young Master, dinner is served. Will you come to the dining room?"

Ciel turns to see Sebastian not three feet behind him. The ornamental wall against which the regular sterling silvers grow stands between them and the mansion, so Ciel knows they will not be seen by anyone in the house. He steps up to Sebastian and takes his hand, just as the butler took his the last time they stood here together. He slips off the devil's left glove and looks again at the faded pentagram.

"I don't know what to do with you," he admits. It is a dreadful, dangerous admission for a small mortal to make to an uncollared devil. He would never have made it while presenting his most inscrutable face as he ruled the chessboard. But he is discovering that there is no chessboard before him, and he is still searching for lines drawn on the ground, the ones that will tell him if they are in a game, and what kind.

The demon gazes back at him with unexpected compassion. The Ciel of before would have snapped at him not to look as if he pitied him, and the Sebastian of before would have stared hungrily at a master foolish enough to expose his weaknesses. But they have been beyond heaven, hell and earth together, and something has changed in both of them.

"I find myself increasingly uncertain what to do with you, also," the butler smiles. "But I still know what to do _for_ you. Serving you dinner would be an excellent start."

"As long as you're not serving _me_ for dinner," Ciel answers quietly, returning the glove to him and releasing his hand.

"I would do that only if _I_ were dining."

"Bastard."

The repartee, at least, has not changed, and Ciel is more certain now that he likes having his butler in a position to give as good as he gets.

***

Dinner features an excellent roast tenderloin with French mustard and sweet cubes of carrot. Ciel enjoys it, but is really looking forward to the cake. When brought out, it far exceeds the earl's expectations.

Sebastian has crafted a honey-cream-covered cake made to look like a beehive, studded with exquisite sugar bees and flowers. When cut, it exposes the lightest layers of vanilla-and-honey sponge interspersed with rainbows of freshly diced, imported fruit coated in clear honey and resting in thickly beaten fresh cream.

"I thought this would make a pleasant change from rich, chocolatey truffles and powdery meringues," Sebastian explains as he serves Ciel the first slice.

The earl takes a forkful of cake, and his exposed eye opens wide as the flavours of fruit, honey and cream burst over his palate. Before he knows it, he is accepting another serving. As he eats, however, and starts feeling a little fuller than is comfortable, it occurs to him for the first time to wonder how hungry his butler is.

"What would taste as good to you as this does to me?" he asks once he is sure the other servants are not in the room. He is genuinely interested in the answer.

"You, in all likelihood. But you are off the menu now."

"What would satisfy you, then?"

"A soul or two."

"Are you hungry?"

"Rather."

"Go and feed."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Go out. Eat something. I would prefer you to avoid feasting on the innocent, and I absolutely forbid you to harm any of my relatives, Chlaus, Jarvis, Abberline's fiancée and child, the royal family, or the servants. But I would like you to consume something appropriate. Eat, then come back to me."

"I won't die without food."

"I know. But I don't want you to be hungry any more. Go."

"Summon me immediately at the first hint of trouble around the mansion."

***

Sebastian leaves the mansion with a sense of freedom different from the unstructured liberty he has known when masterless. Uncollared, he does as he pleases. But collared only by a slender thread, he experiences the pleasure of doing as he likes while knowing it is in tune with what the child wants him to do.

 _Avoid the innocent? Hmm. Who is truly innocent in this world?_

He stalks places steeped in the cruelty of humankind, and picks out individuals whom Ciel would probably say deserve to die. But he can never tell when the death of a human will be attended by a soul reaper – William T. Spears, Grelle, Ronald Knox and company, overworked as they are, are erratic in the promptness of their appearances. He does not wish to tangle with any of them tonight, for he wants to return quickly to Ciel.

Besides, what does he think he is doing? Playing _God_?

He laughs at the irony of that and turns away from the humans. He enters the deep forests instead and looks for the things of darkness that will devour people, given half a chance. Things like Susan Rothstein's succubus, half-mad spirits unanchored from ancient menaces that ruled the woods when the world was a wilder place, solitary phantoms that have become more like beasts than the minor deities they once claimed to be.

He stalks one, pounces and eats, knowing he will be uninterrupted by reapers, or "Shinigami", as Tanaka once referred to similar beings when talking of legends from his ancestral homeland. He keeps his senses sharp for Ambrose, Carsten or other devils, but none are nearby. Satisfied, he cleans the traces of spirit energy off his mouth. Ciel will not taste or smell such things, but he does not want to taint his little body with the detritus of such a meal.

He returns to the mansion to find Baldroy serving cake to Tanaka and the other servants on Ciel's orders. The boy is reading in the library. Sebastian looks in on him and the servants, finds everything in order, and needs to do nothing until Ciel is ready for his bath.

He observes when he enters the earl's bedroom to let Mey-Rin in with the hot water that the rose he gave Ciel some days ago is now hanging upside-down from a blue ribbon tied to one of the bedposts, to preserve its petals and overall shape.

Ciel enters the room – surprisingly, Sebastian has not had to go downstairs to look for him. Once Mey-Rin leaves, Sebastian locks the door and expects him to ask what he ate, but the question does not come. The boy only removes his eye patch and rings, and stands in his usual place near the bed, where Sebastian normally undresses him for his baths. The butler takes off his gloves, and is about to help him out of his jacket when the earl says: "I would like, for once, not to be the only one standing unclothed in this room."

"Young Master?"

"When you remove one of my garments, it would only be fair to remove the corresponding garment on yourself," Ciel says evenly. "We're equals, aren't we?"

"I am not the one in need of a bath."

"You are never in need of sleep or food, but you do sleep and eat. So take off my jacket, then yours."

Sebastian wears a look on his face that Ciel cannot read, but the boy thinks he sees glimmers of amusement in those red eyes as his butler slips the dove-grey jacket off him and hangs it up, then peels off his own black swallowtail coat – which he would have removed before bathing him, in any case.

Next, he unbuttons Ciel's slate-grey waistcoat and folds it for cleaning.

"Now yours," the boy prompts, when the demon returns to where he stands but does not immediately disrobe further.

"How far do you really wish to take this, Young Master?"

"All the way."

Sebastian hesitates only a second more before unfastening the chain of his pocket watch so he can unbutton his own waistcoat without snagging it on the timepiece. The black, sleeveless item joins the swallowtail coat over the back of the velvet-upholstered chair that is usually with the side table.

"I wonder if you understand the import of those words," the butler murmurs as he unknots the ribbon-tie around Ciel's neck and arranges the length of deep-blue satin on the nightstand. He drops his own black tie over the chair.

"If I do not like it, I will ask that the process be halted," the boy answers as Sebastian unbuttons his shirt before easing his arms out of it and placing it atop the folded waistcoat.

"Halting a process is not always easy once it is in motion," says Sebastian, smiling as Ciel reaches out and tries to undo the buttons on the stiffly starched lapels of his butler's shirt. He only clumsily manages one before the devil takes over with his stronger, more practised fingers. The shirt goes over the back of the chair, and Ciel gazes curiously at Sebastian's chest, shoulders and upper arms, which he has never seen uncovered before.

The demon in this form has a slim upper body, with the sleek, defined musculature of classical Greek statuary. It is not the earl's intention to stare so hard, as if he were not better brought up, but his eyes take in the details as if he were studying a living marble sculpture, fascinated by the neat, pale-pink nipples, the precise depression of the belly button, and the apparent lack of hair under his arms. He has not the least idea if Sebastian's demon physique has such features, but in this shape, he has adopted the essential bodily characteristics of mortals and perfected the details.

Sebastian's hands move to unfasten Ciel's shorts, only to stop when the boy says: "You always remove my shoes and stockings first, but they're still on."

"If I removed those, I would have to remove my own, would I not? It seems terribly improper for a devil posing as a perfect butler to be unshod in the presence of an earl."

"You don't have cloven hooves in this form, do you?" Ciel asks. "If not, I do not see why being unshod should be any more improper than being unclothed."

"I do not have cloven hooves in any form," Sebastian replies, projecting an offended air. "All that nonsense about hooves and tails was no more than the primitive imagination of mediaeval artists. Devils are by and large very elegant creatures."

"Says one."

"Off with the shoes then," Sebastian says, slipping the hand-made, leather, brass-buckled articles off the boy's feet, then the stockings. He follows by removing his own laced, black-leather shoes and his socks, placing them under the chair. Ciel studies the strong, finely formed feet and observes with fascination that the toenails are a gleaming black to match the fingernails.

"You can change so much of your appearance to fit in with mortals, but you can't change the colour of your nails?"

"Did I say I couldn't?" Sebastian asks in reply. "I merely prefer not to. It is rather more troublesome than altering other details. Besides, glossy black is a perfect hue for claws. It matches the blood that is so often on them."

"Did you get any blood on them tonight?"

"No, little one. The thing I ate had no blood in it."

He unfastens Ciel's shorts now, and helps him out of them. Ciel instinctively looks away when Sebastian starts to unbutton his trousers, but once they are off, he steals a glance at the long, lean, aesthetically muscled legs which surprisingly do not look at all ridiculous in those white cotton drawers which fit him like a second skin.

Sebastian kneels before him again and unbuttons the boy's soft, combed-cotton drawers before slipping them off his legs and adding them to the small washing pile. He stands to undo his own. Ciel tries to look at him boldly, but fails.

"Too much for you, Young Master?" Sebastian asks, coming forward and tilting his chin up to look into his eyes. "Shall I put my clothes back on?"

"No," Ciel answers in a hushed voice.

The devil's parts are perfectly male, built to what the earl assumes is a normal adult scale, neither grossly long, red or swollen, nor thin, pale and small; not erect at present, but suggestive of a promise to become so...

His observations are interrupted as he is lifted into his butler's arms, skin-to-skin like this for the first time, and carried into the bathroom. Sebastian checks the temperature of the bath without putting him down, decides it should be warmer, and scoops out a few pails' worth before pouring a hot pailful in. Then he steps into the porcelain tub with Ciel and lowers them both into the water.

He settles in behind Ciel, flanking him with his long legs bent at the knees. Ciel hunches forward for a minute while Sebastian works the washcloth over his back. But when the devil leans forward and brings his hands round to the boy's front to wash his chest and tummy before abandoning the washcloth and simply wrapping his arms around Ciel to hold him, the boy leans against his butler and lets him draw him gently backwards till Sebastian's spine moulds itself to the curve at the head of the tub.

Ciel lies cradled by Sebastian's body and limbs, back pressed along Sebastian's chest, belly and crotch, feeling the strangeness and familiarity of the one holding him – the embrace he knows like no other, the oddness of his being nude along with him, the unnerving and intriguing throb of that hardening member against his lower back.

Sebastian lets him lie against him, unmoving, soaking in the situation – physically, emotionally and mentally – content to let him remain this way all night if he chooses, or end it if he prefers. The open possibilities leave Ciel calm, and at last, his body makes up his mind for him.

He feels his cock swelling, growing interested in the person behind him, and knows now what he would really like to do. He puts his hands over Sebastian's, which are still resting on his chest and belly, and moves his butler's right hand down his body until it reaches that stiffening part of his anatomy which demands attention. Sebastian obliges, tracing his contours with his fingers, teasing him wordlessly, making him shiver with anticipation, while his other arm pulls him back securely against his chest.

He touches him thus for a while, lightly caressing him with his fingertips, exploring his responses, giving him plenty of time before enclosing him in his hand. Ciel inhales sharply, and his breath quickens. As Sebastian begins to move his hand slowly up and down the boy's growing shaft, Ciel is gripped first by a swelling of pleasure that seems to both fill and hollow out his belly, then by mounting waves of desire that wash over him as the demon male strokes him rhythmically. Both his smaller hands clutch the devil's left arm which is holding him securely as the right hand increases its pace subtly, then slows gradually, then goes a little faster, and a bit more, a little more firmly, as his lips deliver an unexpected nibble to Ciel's right ear, making him cry out with arousal, sending him past the point where he can turn back.

He moves his hips to meet the downstrokes of Sebastian's hand, sending water lapping over the rim of the tub, but he doesn't care, for he is throwing his head back against the devil's shoulder, trying to bite back his whimpers. Sebastian cradles him tighter, and at once he is crying out shamelessly, panting, as the intolerably sweet tension climbs and scales, and finally breaks. He peaks with a shudder, shooting his seed into the bathwater, straining to push once, twice more, into Sebastian's hand until he is spent. The sweetness subsides as he slumps against his butler's body, momentarily senseless, but still aware of Sebastian pressing a kiss to his hair, those strong arms embracing him as if they will never let him go.


	23. Mentor

Sebastian enjoys episodes of anarchy and destruction as much as any other demon. However, he takes pleasure also in moments of peace. Wrapping his body around Ciel's under the covers of the earl's bed, he concludes that this is a peace purer than mere silence, truer than mere solitude.

The boy is fast asleep, his breathing deep and regular. Despite his being accustomed to having a large bed all to himself, and to sleeping in his nightshirt, his rest seems undisturbed by Sebastian's proximity and their nakedness. He stirs in the devil's arms without waking, turning onto his back with his head cushioned partly by his pillow and partly by his butler's left forearm.

The demon props himself up on his left elbow and looks down at the boy with some bemusement. That he cares for this mortal is a truth he no longer questions. He knows that the strongest impetus for confirming his devotion was Ciel's self-sacrifice for him. He had, though, already been deeply interested in him before that unexpected act. Perhaps his impulsive decision to not only spare the child's life but even save him from suicide on the devils' island more than a month ago led him to find reasons to value him.

It may have begun as justification of that ilk, sharpened by carnal urges, but it has gone beyond that. At this moment, Sebastian could no more explain why he treasures Ciel than he could expound on the nature of love. What could a devil know of love? Could this, though, be something close enough?

As for why Ciel is attracted to him, he imagines the causes to be a stirring-together of adolescent curiosity, gratitude for his desperate efforts to save him from the shadow of the spell, a response to his previous attempts to seduce him, and a natural attachment to the one who has been his somewhat faithful hound for three years.

He does not expect the boy's interest to last. When the earl grows bored – or disgusted – the devil will withdraw graciously. He will not wish to leave; his own feelings will not alter. But at least he can continue to protect him from a distance, swooping in only when needed, and disappearing when he is not.

He does not _want_ to share this child. He does not want him to marry Elizabeth. He does not want him in anyone else's arms, at any age. But those are only his devilish desires and possessiveness. The earl's wishes in the years to come may be entirely different, and Sebastian will yield, for not to do so would mean chaining the boy to him – poor repayment for Ciel's refusal to enslave him.

All that will come later. For now, he can oblige him in other ways, and admire his charms.

His lips are slightly parted; he snores very lightly. Sebastian touches a fingertip to his mouth, feeling the warmth of his breath. How simple it would be to stop those breaths forever; humans are so easy to kill. He moves his finger down, over Ciel's chin, and traces a black nail along his throat. One deep slit, and he would be as good as dead, unable to stop the blood from gushing out, unable to breathe. He moves his hand down further, over the boy's chest. There is his heart, right under the flesh at this spot, under the bones. Such delicate bones. He could drive two rigid, sharp-clawed fingers through the flesh and rib cage, and that heart would never beat again.

Sebastian smiles. It pleases him to think that Ciel's life is in his hands, because it offers the illusion that he can determine whether he continues to exist. He knows it to be no more than a false sense of security that the child will be safe as long as he is here, but no better security is accessible to him at this time. Death can take the boy in a multitude of ways, many of which he has no power to prevent. This pretence – this process of enumerating the ways in which he could destroy Ciel's body – is peculiarly comforting, because he knows that he will do nothing of the sort.

He steals a kiss from him. His breath is dry from sleep, but Sebastian, beastlike, finds the stale breath of humans he is fond of an interesting rather than offensive smell, closely associated with the promise of blood, and sex, and tender flesh.

"Mmmf...?" Ciel mumbles sleepily against Sebastian's mouth. "Is it morning?"

"Not yet."

"What are you doing?"

"Thinking."

"What about?" Ciel slurs, eyes still shut tight.

"I was thinking that I do not love you. I hope you do not mind."

Those blue eyes crack open. Though he cannot possibly see anything in this darkness, he fixes his glare quite accurately on Sebastian's face, and rumbles out his reply: "Well, I never asked you to. Stop thinking about stupid things like love and go to sleep. I don't know how to love either, you fool."

He promptly turns his back to Sebastian and starts to slip into the world of slumber again.

Sebastian laughs inside, silently. How boldly this little fellow speaks, for someone who only two hours ago was uncharacteristically subdued in the bathroom, because he had been frightened by what he had done in the bathtub. The pleasure of his first proper sexual climax had been quickly succeeded by what the devil sensed was a feeling of shame and fear rather than contentment once he recovered his full alertness. The shadows of those earlier occasions of abuse when he was ten, and by Langton, must have had more than a little to do with it.

"The bathwater's dirty," he had mumbled, squirming out of Sebastian's embrace, pulling himself up, and climbing out.

"I'll wash you with the unused water from the pails," the butler had said, rising to quickly wipe him down with a fresh cloth dipped into the pail which still held some warm water. That done, he had washed briskly too, not caring to wait for his body to clean itself, and returned to the bedroom after wrapping Ciel and himself in towels.

"I've learnt enough for today," Ciel had stated as Sebastian patted him dry.

"Understood. I will dress you for bed, and return in the morning."

"No. Come to bed with me. But don't... _do_ anything else tonight... if you take my meaning."

"I do."

He had reached for Ciel's nightshirt, but the boy was already climbing into his bed, scooting over under the covers to make room for him. So he had followed suit, fitting the front of his body to Ciel's back, putting one arm over him and another under his head, and in minutes, the earl had fallen asleep.

Now, two hours later, he strokes his hair and whispers to him: "Does it please you to live now? Or do you still wish to die?"

Ciel is so sleepy that he can barely form the words, but he does process the question, and cares enough to give a just-audible answer that trails off tiredly: "Life's tolerable, 'cept when you keep me awake..."

 _Singular brat._ When he is older or less inhibited – and if he is still interested – Sebastian will teach him about etiquette between lovers, how one should not fall asleep before _both_ partners are satisfied. For now, he will let him be selfish. He remains far too haunted by shadows from his past, and this is not the night to demand of him things he is not ready to give.

***

This day, Ciel has only one lesson planned for the afternoon. A retired banker who was a casual acquaintance of his father's comes over occasionally to give him bookkeeping and accounting pointers – enough to prevent him from having the wool pulled over his eyes by his business managers. He need not prepare for such an undemanding lesson, so he spends the morning on correspondence.

His first priority is to write a letter of thanks to John Jarvis. Next, he issues a note to Funtom's managers, instructing them to send a large number of toys and a quantity of sweets to the vicar of the Church of the Trinity in Lambeth, for the children from the poorer families in his parish. He then writes to his bank to arrange for regular donations to be made to that church, anonymously.

Ciel cannot and will not think of God. But he can do something for those who serve that God, and have shown him kindness.

As he puts the finished letters aside, Sebastian enters the study with a snack of buttery orange-shortbread sticks, half-dipped in chocolate, and a pot of Earl Grey tea.

"No more than three sticks, otherwise you will not be able to eat your lunch," the butler cautions him.

"Then why have you brought six?" Ciel asks, trying not to show that he is both pleased and abashed to be once again alone in a room with the male with whom he shared a very intimate bath, then curled up in bed with all night, albeit innocently.

"Six looked more presentable on the plate than three," Sebastian replies matter-of-factly as he pours out a cup of tea for the earl. "Besides, it is good for you to exercise self-control with snacks, so I shall occasionally give you options that you should refrain from exercising."

"Yes, Tutor Michaelis, _sir_ ," Ciel grumbles sardonically.

"What a _good_ boy you are."

"Shut up and sit down. I have need of your _tutorly_ advice."

"I had better stand, as I am primarily acting as your butler at this time."

"Be my advisor for this hour. Sit."

"Very well, my lord," Sebastian sighs, moving a chair from one end of the room to Ciel's desk, and sitting down beside him.

"Commissioner Randall's note here says that he has written to the Prince of Wales, who is now in France, to tell him what happened to the Eastons. The queen has been informed, although she has not been given all the details, and intends to return to London from Balmoral today. Her Majesty is shocked by what has happened, and His Royal Highness is sure to be just as appalled. I am trying to assess if the royal family will hold me accountable in any way, and what I ought to do about it, if anything. What do you think?"

"Her Majesty and His Royal Highness are most likely to blame the Newgate wardens for letting Mrs Easton escape, and the Tower warders for letting her and her associates in," Sebastian says. "But they will soon hear privately of the supernatural qualities of the men with her, and learn that talk has already broken out on the street that terrorists armed with explosives stole into the Tower of London, murdered members of the aristocracy, and blew a hole in one wall of the Bloody Tower. They _may_ question why you were unable to stop the more-than-human associates of Sophia Easton. But if you explain that no one had any inkling before then that Mrs Easton had such associates, and that the Phantomhive agency moved swiftly to destroy the bulk of those associates' power, they will refocus their attention on preventing public panic."

"Then what?"

"To avoid spreading fear and frenzy through talk of dangerous magicians and demons, Her Majesty will accept the necessity of allowing Scotland Yard to release 'findings' that terrorists were indeed behind the operation – but that the Eastons and their gang _were_ the terrorists," says Sebastian. "They will say that the Easton family was seeking to vent its anger against the crown and the authorities for exposing the brothers' corruption, and Mrs Easton's links with organised crime. Their suicide and murders will be explained as the final, desperate act of the cornered and proud."

"Questions will be asked, and doubters will speak up all the way from the public houses to Parliament," Ciel conjectures. "Those who love to hatch theories about conspiracies in high places are probably already preparing to publish and distribute pamphlets."

"Naturally. But you will advise Lord Randall that the remaining gang members loyal to Mrs Easton must be apprehended and shown to the public; the scullery maid and newspaper reporter are to sign altered confessions supporting the Easton-terrorist findings that will save their lives instead of condemning them to the gallows; and after a time, this will all become a footnote in history."

Ciel considers Sebastian's words. He largely agrees with the devil's view of how things will turn out, although he wonders if every detail will be as smooth as that.

"The Prince of Wales will not blame you for helping to expose the Easton brothers," Sebastian adds. "He will blame himself for letting them deceive and blackmail him. He will blame their mother for abducting the innocent daughter of the Marquess of Midford, then killing her own sons when thwarted. He will continue to bring you out of the shadows, for he is increasingly certain that he wants to rule a Great Britain that does not require an agency to hide the crown's misdeeds."

"I am prepared for anything to happen. Even if he blames me, I will deal with it, whatever comes."

"So you do want to live," Sebastian comments. "You were not merely talking in your sleep last night."

"Well, life is turning out to be rather interesting," Ciel remarks, trying to sound casual. He picks up a piece of shortbread and bites into the chocolate-dipped end in lieu of casting a meaningful glance at Sebastian. He knows how to play at being coy when he is working a case undercover, but when it comes to this – a deepening, genuine connection between himself and another – he scarcely knows how to act.

"Mortals who want to live are always so much more delicious," Sebastian says, straight-faced.

Ciel chokes on the shortbread and hacks up crumbs all over his desk as his advisor-demon snorts and pats his back. "Bastard," the earl croaks out between coughs.

"I ask your pardon, my lord," says the devil with a grin. "I could not resist teasing you. Oh... did I frighten you, _child_? Don't be afraid, now..."

"I'm not afraid of you, you dolt," Ciel snaps, swallowing some tea to clear his throat.

"Are you sure of that?" Sebastian tells him, pushing his chair back, standing up and bending over the earl to brush stray crumbs off his clothing. "You _are_ rather tasty, you know, in so many ways."

The boy gives a little huff of annoyance. Still, he takes hold of Sebastian's tie and pulls him towards him to give him a kiss redolent of tea and shortbread and all that is exquisitely Ciel.

"I said I'd learnt enough last night," the earl draws back to say. "But it's a new day, so teach me a little more."

"How little?"

"Go along and I'll tell you when."

"This is not a drink we're pouring."

"I know."

Still holding Sebastian's tie, he seeks his lips again in a manner both eager and shy. The demon lifts him off his chair without breaking the kiss and takes the seat himself, positioning the earl on his lap. Ciel is bolder this time, exploring Sebastian's mouth, running his tongue over his fangs, testing their sharpness and unevenness, unconsciously giving soft hums and murmurs in response to the pressure of the devil's lips.

Sebastian tastes his interest, and arousal... and trepidation. He draws back to caution the boy: "You want to be ready to learn more lessons. You think you are ready. But you are not. You will be frightened as you were last night."

"I was _not_ frightened," Ciel answers indignantly.

"You are very good at pretending not to be afraid, but I know when you are."

"I was not afraid. I want what you want. We both know what you wanted to do to me and with me when I was ill, and when you made _someone else_ wear my jacket. I want all that."

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"Tell me: why did you ask me to go out and feed myself last night?"

"I didn't want you to be hungry."

"Why not?"

"I wanted you to be as content as I was."

"What else?"

"I... didn't want you to mistake your hunger for food for your hunger for me."

"That was what I thought. I, likewise, do not want you to mistake any gratitude you may feel towards me for saving your life while uncontracted, or your possible need of me, or the frisson of danger and fear you experience in my inhuman presence, with your desire for me."

"I'm not confusing them."

"Your search for clarity is clouded by the terrors of your past."

"I'm _not_ afraid of anything," he snaps. "It's just unfamiliar to me. I'll grow accustomed to it." He wriggles into a better position on Sebastian's thighs and nips the demon's left earlobe with his lips, warming the contours of his ear with the heat of his mouth, making his butler purr.

"Very well," Sebastian says, turning his head so that his own lips touch Ciel's. "Write your next letter while you sit in my lap, and I'll teach you more. Give Randall our suggestions about what must be done with regard to the affair in the Tower."

"I can't write like this," Ciel grumbles, but only half-heartedly.

"Try. This is a new day, after all, a day to learn new things."

"If Finny scales a ladder to clean the windows now, we'll have the devil of a time trying to explain ourselves," he mutters, squirming around on Sebastian's legs to face the desk so he can work on the letter to the Commissioner.

"As I _am_ a devil, I shall be very much at home having the devil of a time explaining it. I shall tell him honestly that you were much too edible to resist taking a nibble from." He nips at Ciel's right ear. "Start writing."

Ciel shivers at the touch of those lips to his ear, an instant physical reminder of what took place in the bath last night, bringing a flush to his cheeks. He only makes it to the third line of the note to Randall before Sebastian leaves off his ear and starts paying attention to his neck. The tingling sensations through his body make his penmanship shaky, and the tails of his "y"s and "g"s wobble as he writes: _"...we should thus be completely honest with His Royal Highness..."_

"I will go only as far as you permit me to," Sebastian murmurs his assurance against the nape of Ciel's neck as he turns his collar down to expose the skin. "At any moment, if you wish me to stop what I am doing, say the word, and I will do no more. Do you hear me?"

"Yes," Ciel whispers back, concentrating hard on forming his letters properly: _"...when Her Majesty is given the full facts of the case, she will see that it will be better..."_

He almost inserts a "yes" by mistake into the middle of that line, so hard is it to focus on three things at once – writing a letter that will make sense to Lord Randall, responding to Sebastian's touch, and answering Sebastian's questions.

"Do you want me to continue?" the advisor-butler asks, untying the ribbon around Ciel's neck. The boy is not wearing a jacket or waistcoat this morning, so undressing him will be very easy indeed.

"Stop asking stupid questions – haven't we agreed that you'll carry on until I tell you to stop?"

"Yes, my lord," Sebastian replies with a smile in his voice, undoing the buttons of the earl's shirt by touch alone, and pulling down the collar of that shirt to expose the bones of his spine beneath the pale flesh. The demon presses his lips to each visible peak of that line of bones, moving down, down, down, until Ciel wriggles his left arm free of the shirt so that his right sleeve will not keep pulling his arm back and interfering with his writing.

"Can I write this letter later?" the earl asks a little breathlessly, as Sebastian pushes him forward slowly and gently to reach the middle of his back.

"No," comes the firm reply. "Finish it."

" _...root out and arrest the remaining members of Mrs Easton's gang and expose them to the public as..."_

By this point, Ciel is leaning across his desk, writing at the far edge, while Sebastian unbuttons his shorts and drawers and eases the garments past his hips to keep planting that row of kisses along the small of his back. Ciel shudders his way through the final line and the sign-off, then nearly yelps when Sebastian flicks his tongue into the crevice of his buttocks. He drops the pen, twists around in his devil's lap, and finds himself quite trapped and bare, shorts and drawers skewed tight around his knees, shirt hanging only from his right forearm.

"I _do_ want you to learn a little more today," Sebastian says, picking up a long wooden ruler from the desk and deftly using it to flick off the curtain tiebacks from the window behind them so that the drapes fall, plunging the study into shadow. "But not what you could learn from any skilled lover, at any time of your life. We should clear some of the shadows first."

The boy looks at him, puzzled, as Sebatian lifts him easily onto the desk.

"Do you trust me?" the devil asks. "Do you trust that this is a desk I am putting you on, and not a sacrificial altar?"

Ciel's words catch in his throat, choked off.

Sebastian lays him down on the smooth wood, then leans over him to cap the ink pot and put it carefully away into one of the drawers, along with everything else on the desk – papers, pens, teacup, plate – slowly, methodically, until the table surface is empty of everything except Ciel.

The earl shivers, partly from the cold spring air in direct contact with his bare skin, but mostly from the realisation that he is stretched out now on a hard slab – it matters not that it is oak rather than stone. All he knows is that he is laid on it the way he was on the day he accidentally summoned Sebastian at the point of what would have been his end at the hands of the occultists.

"Do you understand that I would not consciously harm you?" Sebastian asks, standing beside him, looking down at his all-but-naked form from his imposing height.

Ciel is breathing too hard to talk – his chest heaving not from arousal but the beginning of what could be a descent into terror and fury.

The demon bites his right glove off his hand and traces a gleaming black fingernail down the centre of the boy's exposed body, from his throat to his crotch, while his left hand covers Ciel's eyes. "Do you know that you were as innocent a child as any before the day you unwittingly summoned me? Do you know that what happened to you happened not because you committed evil before then but because others did?"

The child's lungs are gasping for more air; he is poised on the precipice, unable to see, hardly able to think.

"You can rage at me, claw at me, hate me for this," Sebastian whispers, bending over him, his mouth almost brushing his left ear. "But I am too closely wound up in the horrors of your past, and I will not have you twisting your nightmares into the thread of your desires."

For a long minute, the only sound in the room comes from Ciel, gulping for air not because his respiratory passages are closing, but because he is seized by terror. Another child who had been through what he went through three years ago, put into this position now, would begin to scream. But the Earl of Phantomhive only clenches his fists, letting his terror peak as his entire body heaves and trembles violently.

"Do you believe that I would never do to you what they did to you? That I would battle heaven, hell and earth to prevent anyone from doing such a thing to you ever again? Now that I am uncollared, if I ever discover anyone attempting to harm you – whether it is that disgusting red-haired soul reaper, or Carsten, or the queen, or even your wife-to-be, I will hunt that person down and tear him or her to pieces. I will protect you till the day you die of old age, or ill-health, whether you are my lover or not. Do you understand?"

Ciel hears, absorbing the demon's promise of protection. His breathing slows and deepens, and he ceases to struggle against himself, against his memories, against his fears. He lies there, drawing warmth from Sebastian, who is still bending over him, arms on either side of him, covering him with his coat, his hair, his body.

Though he has not moved from the desk, he feels as if his entire self has collapsed through several feet of tense space into a state of relaxation as complete as that he felt for a handful of seconds after he climaxed in the bathtub under his butler's skilled hand. This calmness is not fleeting like the other, but penetrates his whole being, till the pace of his heart becomes steady and regular once more.

Sebastian uncovers his eyes, picks him up and holds him close. "I would defend you even against myself, do you know that?" the devil asks.

Ciel recovers his powers of movement at last, wraps his arms tightly around his butler's neck, and whispers back: "You are such a complete and utter _bastard_."

"I know."

"Damn you," he murmurs numbly, without a hint of malice.

"Alas, Young Master, I was damned a long time ago."

***

For four days afterwards, Ciel does not ask for "lessons" of any kind from Sebastian. He does not ask him to undress, or to bathe with him. He lets him into his bed each night, but tells him to wear a nightshirt, and keeps his own on. For days, he sifts through his thoughts and emotions, practising the discipline of remaining still instead of charging ahead. He has always been impatient, and has held the belief since the day he summoned the devil who now lives with him that staying still is for the dead, not the living.

Now, however, he learns to "play dead". He quietly interrogates himself as he lies in bed with Sebastian, keeping a space of two feet between them, if he is seeking a replacement for the simple joys he lost as a small child. Is he yearning for a return to his parents' bed, the security he had on stormy nights when he would pad down the passageway to their bedroom and be welcomed by them with open arms? Does he just want to snuggle down between them again and feel safe once more? Would he be content if all he ever did was to lie beside Sebastian and be protected, then some years later, lie beside Lizzie and be loved, and perhaps protect his own children from their fears of thunderstorms in time to come? Is that all he wants? Simple security? Is he confusing it with a desire to be this demon's lover?

By night, he ponders such thoughts; by day, he engages in the normal routines of his life. John Jarvis has written back to thank him for the toys and sweets, saying that they have delighted many children in his parish who would never have been able to afford them. Lord Randall sends word that he has carried out parts of Ciel's advice, and arrested several of Mrs Easton's people. Then on the morning of the fourth day, as he eats his breakfast in the morning room, Sebastian brings to the table a letter addressed to "C. Winter".

In recent months, there has been only one person to whom Ciel has given a card with his initial and part of his family's original name, Winterbourn. That would be William Thompson, the last human being known to have been attacked by the succubus controlled by Percival Ambrose fifty years ago.

From its mark, the letter was posted in Central London last evening. It reads:

" _Dear Mr. Winter,_

" _I hope this letter finds you well._

" _You visited my home in Holborn a little over three weeks ago, to ask me about the mysterious event that I experienced fifty years previously. You gave me your card, and asked me to write if I remembered anything else._

" _I write now not because I have recollected more details, but because I have seen the man with the silver hair again. I saw him not three hours ago, when he passed me on the pavement along High Holborn, as I was walking to the shops. I am certain it was he. He looked a little older than I remembered, but it was the same man. If truly it was not, then he must have been a son or grandson. The man I saw fifty years ago looked no more than someone in his middle twenties; today, he appeared perhaps to be halfway between thirty and forty. He did not seem to be in good health._

" _I am confounded as to how a man could apparently age only ten years or so in half a century, when I have become old and frail in that time. But he could not have been merely human when I encountered him that first time, and surely such people have abilities I know nothing of._

" _As I declared before, I have no desire to be involved with this person or his deeds again. I only wish to tell you what I saw._

" _Yours sincerely,_

 _William Thompson"_

Ciel ensures that none of the other servants are around before showing the letter to Sebastian, saying: "How sharp Thompson's memories and vision are we do not know. But when we saw Ambrose, he looked no more than twenty-five. If he is now noticeably older and unwell, the loss of Carsten's powers for sustaining his unnatural long life must be telling."

"He will not last much longer. He said he was three hundred years old. He may have a store of demonic sustenance culled from Carsten and possibly other beings through his magic, but it will run out unless he enslaves another, and he said to us that he wished to die soon, did he not?"

"Yes. I doubt he will chain another devil or ghoul to himself now. I hope he does not. He has done more harm than he knows."

"But some good also," Sebastian remarks.

"How can you say that?" Ciel growls. "He wished to condemn you to serving me mindlessly for as long as I would want."

"He was trying to do something for you."

"I don't need that kind of help."

"His high-handedness also helped to affirm how important you were to me," admits Sebastian.

"You would eventually have come to that point yourself, without such uninvited assistance. We want nothing more from him."

"Let us tell him that to his face, so that he does not try to bestow any more 'gifts' on you."

"I don't wish to see him again."

"No? Oh dear, but he is approaching the manor as we speak."

"What?" Ciel gasps, springing to his feet.

Sebastian bows playfully, takes his hand and kisses the backs of his fingers. "Have no fear, my lord. He is alone, and I sense that his powers are a fraction of what they were before."

"But–"

"He won't harm you."

"Of course he won't harm me on purpose – it's _you_ I'm worried about!" Ciel cries angrily, realising how terribly badly he does _not_ want Sebastian to be irreversibly damaged.

"I won't be caught off-guard by him again. Would I allow myself to be turned into an empty shell of a devil _before_ you have had the time to learn exactly what you want to do with me, Young Master?" the butler asks with a smile that almost dazes Ciel, so mysteriously beautiful does it render his face.

Ciel grips Sebastian's hand. "Don't go to the door," he orders him sternly. "Get away from here. The servants and I will handle him – he has no reason to hurt us, so we'll be safe. But you..."

"There is nothing to fear."

"Sebastian, I command you–" Ciel begins furiously, only to halt his words mid-stream as he remembers with dismay that he no longer has that kind of power over the demon.

The butler returns the pressure the earl is applying to his hand, conveying to him the need for steadiness and sense. "Don't be afraid for me," he tells Ciel. "Unless I am greatly mistaken, what I detect of his energy and mood from this distance suggests that he is simply here to talk. Granted, he _may_ spit in my face, but he is primarily here to see you. Come."

Sebastian leads Ciel out of the morning room, towards the entrance hall. They pass Baldroy and Mey-Rin, and though the chef and housemaid stare at the sight of the butler holding the earl by the hand, Sebastian does not release his young master.

"Baldroy, Mey-Rin, we have an unwelcome visitor," says Sebastian without breaking stride. "Arm yourselves, but be aware that he may use magic against us. Call for Finnian."

"Already armed, Mister Sebastian," Baldroy drawls, pulling out a pistol from under his apron. Mey-Rin hitches up her skirts with a tab and draws two revolvers from their holsters strapped to her thighs before yelling for Finny.

"I thought you said he was only here for a talk?" Ciel snaps.

"Well, extra precautions never hurt," Sebastian grins.

Ciel glares up at him, then quiets his racing emotions as they reach the foyer and the front door. "I won't let anything bad happen to you," he states at last, very calmly.

"The very words I was about to say to you," Sebastian smiles, opening the door.

A hired brougham almost as smart as the Phantomhive growler rolls up the driveway and stops before the stone steps. The driver opens the door of the conveyance as Ciel and Sebastian walk out of the house. Ambrose steps down from the carriage. He still appears youthful, but anyone who saw the beautiful young man of only days before would now find him shockingly aged. Mey-Rin and Baldroy set the sights of their firearms on him from behind the stone balustrade, while Finny comes round one corner of the house armed with what looks like a dead tree trunk. The visitor ignores them all as he climbs the stairs, eyes fixed on the linked hands of the earl and his demon until he stands level with them.

Shifting his cold glare from those joined hands to Sebastian's garnet eyes, Ambrose murmurs in a voice heavy with resignation and distaste: "Heaven help us all. Have you gone that far already?"


	24. History

"I suspected there was an unhealthy attachment between you, but to see it with my own eyes – the young Earl of Phantomhive holding hands with a _devil_ , his butler, is beyond shameless," Ambrose rebukes them once he, Ciel and Sebastian are alone in the withdrawing room. "I knew that demon would behave improperly with you after you showed your weakness by protecting him from my spell – but I am shocked that he is already doing so, while you are but a child!"

The servants are outside in the passageway, armed, leaving the master and the butler to talk in private with the visitor. Ambrose is using that privacy to speak his mind, but Ciel is not to be cowed.

"If you have come to preach to me in my own home, Mister Ambrose, I shall ask you to leave," the earl answers coldly from his armchair, staring across at Ambrose on the sofa.

"I will leave when I have told you what you need to hear. Would you rather I do it behind closed doors, or shout it from outside the house? I gather your other servants do not know the nature of that filthy thing you call your butler?" Ambrose has the face of a relatively young man in his mid-thirties, but his attitude is that of a disapproving old man.

"I do not care if you shout it from atop Lord Nelson's column," Ciel retorts. "But I doubt you will do so. You seem to have been exceedingly discreet these three hundred years about the otherworldly beings you know enough about to have enslaved. Even when you so spectacularly broke into the Tower and ended the Eastons' lives, you never divulged Carsten's nature, or Sebastian's. I believe you do not like people to know that such beings exist. Despite your familiarity with them, you think them unnatural, a secret best kept hidden."

"A perceptive child," the visitor remarks. "As befits a Phantomhive. But why would you let that creature touch you in that way?"

"What way?" Ciel asks evenly.

"Letting him take your hand in front of your servants, and in front of me, tells me you have let him much too close to you."

"That is none of your concern," says Ciel. "Say what you came to say, then leave."

Ambrose sighs, casts a contemptuous glance at Sebastian, who is standing beside Ciel's chair, and tells the earl: "First, I am relieved that you were not permanently harmed after you so impulsively disrupted my spell. I tried to recover you, but I lost control of Carsten when he entered the shadow of the spell. He attacked me upon returning, and I had to shield myself against him with my magic. He left only hours later, when I stabilised the shield and threatened to begin the process of recapturing him. Once he left, I tried to open a doorway to reach you, but the access points had become too damaged by his assaults. I went out and looked for the nearest place from which I could safely make a new opening, but when I found one, I sensed that another exit had cracked open elsewhere in the city. I found it, ascertained that you were no longer inside, then sealed the opening and terminated the spell. Unfortunately, without Carsten, I could not locate you, or determine what condition you were in. I could not search for you for long. I had to conceal my whereabouts from him, and employ my remaining resources to stay alive until I could speak with you again."

"Do you know how much harm that spell caused?" Ciel growls. "I almost died. If Sebastian had not saved me, I would not be here."

"It is fortunate that your covenant with that creature was still intact enough for him to save you," Ambrose says. "My spell was designed to break the contract."

"Contract?" Ciel snaps. "The contract was–"

"Mister Ambrose," Sebastian speaks. "What have you really come here to say?"

"Do you permit that thing to speak out of place?" Ambrose demands of Ciel. "You give it too much free rein, child. It is not a pet."

"Do not tell me how to run my household," the earl responds, having quickly deduced that Sebastian does not want to reveal yet that their covenant is all but gone.

"You had better know that you are playing with fire. If you must have anything to do with devils, you must restrict their freedom. I had hoped to help you escape the fates of the previous Phantomhive earls by making that demon nothing more or less than your tool and weapon. I shall impart to you the method for doing so if you come to your senses in the future, after I am gone. But even if you will not use my magic, you cannot go on the way you have and hope to end your days differently from your father, or grandfather. Your great-grandfather lived longer than most of his forebears, and reached a more advanced age than his son and grandson did, because he was wise enough to use his magical skills compassionately when he could, and ruthlessly when he had to, something his descendants did not learn. I hope to help you, at least, avoid an early grave. I hope it gives you more time to repent of taking your soul so lightly as to sell it to a filthy demon."

"The Phantomhives always live with danger," Ciel states. "An early grave is unavoidable, unless we are very fortunate, as you seem to suggest that my great-grandfather was."

"Fortunate? Accidental good fortune has little to do with it. It is about wisdom and knowledge. You may have reconstructed every pillar and stair after the previous manor was razed to the ground, but you cannot have replaced the old records lost in the fire. You thus know little of your history. Even your aunt, Lady Midford, cannot have studied much of the family's history before she married. So much has been lost, but I know things others don't. When I was a child in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the very first Earl of Phantomhive – or rather Earl Winterbourn – was still alive. It was clever Queen Bess who designed that earldom to be the shadow to the throne, to absorb the darkness around the crown in ways unattainable by regular channels of authority, so that the monarchs of England might always live in the light."

"Phantomhive dates from Queen Elizabeth's time?" Ciel asks with interest, for this is news to him. "Did you know that, Sebastian?"

"No, my lord. I do not take especial note of the creation of new titles or bodies, unless they have direct relevance to my interests. During the reign of Elizabeth, my interests in the mortal world were physically located in France and Spain, not England."

Ambrose explains: "In 1563, the queen elevated an obscure baron, William Winterbourn, to the rank of viscount, then very swiftly to an earldom. He was simply Earl Winterbourn at the time, but the household – or agency – that grew around him, became known privately in the uppermost royal circles as the Hive of Phantoms, for their task was to eradicate by secret means anything that cast a shadow on the crown of England. They quietly tackled matters within England that were unsettling to the monarch, but could not be dealt with through official channels – a kind of domestic counterpart to the foreign networks of spies and assassins England cultivated on the Continent."

"Why did Queen Elizabeth create the agency?"

"It was because of the death of Amy Dudley, wife of Robert Dudley, later to become the first Earl of Leicester. Everyone knew that Lord Robert was Her Majesty's great love – possibly her only true love. If she had ever chosen to marry anyone for love, it would have been him. But he had a wife, Amy, and many enemies jealous of his intimacy with one of the most eligible monarchs in Europe. Amy Dudley died twenty years before I was born, but I knew all about her death and its consequences for the queen when I was a child, because it was still talked about in certain circles. She was found dead at the bottom of the stairs in the house she was staying in, in early September, 1560. This happened at the height of rumours that the queen and Dudley would find some way to free him to marry her – through divorce, or worse. Years later, most sensible people agreed that neither the queen nor the earl would have been stupid enough to murder her, for they would have been the first suspects. If her death was indeed murder and not an accident, it was most likely her husband's enemies who did it, to cast suspicion on him, making it impossible for the queen to marry him. But at the time, reasonable thought did not prevail. There was fevered gossip amongst the courtiers, amongst the common people, and even abroad, that Amy Dudley must have been murdered by her husband, or the queen, or both. Her Majesty could not control or contain the rumours. Because of such talk, she realised she could never marry Lord Robert, although he was now free to marry her. That experience taught her that she needed other channels besides her political spies to protect her public image – a domestic secret weapon to prevent her being cast into shadow again in her people's eyes."

"She handed down the control of this agency to the monarchs who came after her?" Ciel asks.

"Yes. Though she was not particularly fond of James Stuart – she had after all authorised his mother's beheading, had she not? – she left him her crown, and the use of what was by then known as the Phantomhive coven. Queen Elizabeth created it in an age when there were no newspapers, reporters or photographers to manipulate for influencing public opinion. She intended the Hive of Phantoms primarily to prevent others from unjustly perceiving her as infamous, rather than for the darkest purposes. But the agency changed after her death, and gradually became what it is today. As early as James I's reign, the Winterbourn earldom quietly became the Phantomhive earldom, though the earls retained the Winterbourn family name until your great-grandfather changed it. They were altering their skills, growing more intertwined with the underworld. I lived through all that. I had nothing directly to do with them at the time, but I knew about them, through my own magical and other sources."

"You said the very first Earl of Phantomhive – or Earl Winterbourn – was still alive when you were a child?" Ciel asks.

"Yes. When I was ten years old, old enough to understand most of the ways of the world around me, Queen Elizabeth was, I believe, fifty-seven, and the first Lord Winterbourn was still alive, although he was shortly to die at the hands of unknown enemies. His eldest son, Philip, inherited his title and duties, well into the reign of James I. The connection between the monarchs of England and the Phantomhive earldom has lasted to this day. And if you are not wise and careful enough to live until you have children of your own, you will be the last Earl of Phantomhive from the Winterbourn line."

"That is not necessarily a bad thing," Ciel comments.

"So you say. But for the sake of your great-grandfather, who showed me compassion, I sincerely hope you will not go to an early grave."

"My duty is to ensure that such a thing does not happen," Sebastian states. "Lord Phantomhive's immediate precursors did not, to my knowledge, make contracts with devils. He is stronger than they were."

"You can only achieve so much, you fool of a demon," Ambrose spits. "What good can you do when you belong exclusively to the forces of evil? You cannot influence the forces of balance, which were partly responsible for destroying Vincent Phantomhive."

"The forces of balance destroyed my father? What do you mean?" Ciel questions.

"You barely understand your origins," Ambrose sighs. "The Phantomhive agency was created to swallow all that was unclean around the throne of England, and be the shadow of the throne, so that the monarch could always live in the light. To achieve that, and rule over the underworld from which much of the uncleanness came, the Phantomhive earls and their associates had to be powerful in their ways of evil, because the forces of evil always demand a show of strength. Display weakness, and those forces of darkness will desert you at best, and devour you at worst. But whenever the Phantomhives grew far too strong, the forces of the universe that demanded balance would step in to tear them down because the shadow must not become stronger than the light. Caught between conflicting demands – to be all-powerful and to be perfectly balanced – the Phantomhives are always doomed."

"Who controls the forces of balance?" Sebastian asks.

"No one," Ambrose replies curtly to the devil before turning to the earl to elaborate. "The universe enforces its own balance, not God, not Satan, not the princes and principalities of the earth. Perhaps God intervenes sometimes, or devils act for their own mischievous reasons, or the rulers of the earth check the powers they can influence. But not one of them fully controls the forces of balance. It is simply a law of nature. Nothing can grow excessively strong before it is hacked down. I used my magic and Carsten's skills to learn more about what happened to your father. The angel who destroyed your family was a renegade, carrying out acts sanctioned neither by heaven nor hell, and concealed from Queen Victoria. Nonetheless, that angel was an agent of the forces of balance, because the shadow of the throne had grown too powerful. At the same time, the forces of evil, which always test the Phantomhives who govern them, had found what they considered a weakness in your father – his love for his family. He loved your mother, and he loved you. Your father became vulnerable to the powers of balance because of his strength, and vulnerable to the powers of evil because of his weakness. In such circumstances, he could not win the game he was playing. Neither can you, unless you leave the game, or impose your own strength and balance on the universe. If you had not stopped me from giving you complete power over your devil, I could have almost certainly secured one of those opposing forces in your favour, leaving you to balance the other with your judgement and sense."

"How is enslaving Sebastian supposed to achieve that?"

"A contract with a devil weakens you even as it empowers you, because it sells your destiny to the demon, and you lose your immortal soul to eternal darkness. Yet, without supernatural powers working for you, you cannot rule the underworld with an iron hand. The best solution for always having the strength to govern the forces of evil is to wield a fully compliant weapon of evil. A devil completely obedient to your will, unable to take your soul, can be such a weapon. You remain master of your destiny; your soul retains the possibility of being reunited with God if you repent in time, once you hand over the reins to your children; yet you never lose control of the underworld because your weapon cannot turn around and bite you."

"Funny thing for you to say, when you've spent these several days running away from Carsten," Sebastian smirks.

"Hold your tongue, demon," Ambrose snarls. "I had full control of Carsten, but failed to realise that his entering a place which contained none of the binding powers of the original spell I had used on him would allow him to break his chains. If I had known that, I would still own him."

"I wonder what else you do not know," Sebastian remarks.

"One thing I certainly do not know is why your master allows you to speak so snidely, or permits you liberties with his person," Ambrose says angrily. "Carsten was never permitted a word out of place. I made certain of that. I would read the Bible to him every evening, and pray that the holy Word of God would make him repent of his nature and spend the remainder of eternity begging God for either forgiveness or a destruction so complete that none of his consciousness would remain to be tormented through the rest of time."

Sebastian stares at Ambrose and snorts in amusement as he asks: "You read the _Bible_ to Carsten every evening for _fifty years_? Ah, Mister Ambrose, it would entertain me exceedingly to watch him get his claws on you."

"Enough," Ciel grumbles, not wanting this to degenerate into a childish argument. "What can I do to balance these opposing forces?"

"First, chain that devil so that he can never harm you, then employ him wisely to govern the underworld. Work judiciously for your monarch, without overstepping your bounds, and pray that the queens or kings you serve will never so continually transgress as to require you to exceed the bounds tolerated by the forces of balance. The shadow of the throne must never become greater than its light."

"Is that the whole of it?"

"Practising it is the trick. It is very nearly impossible without absolute power on the one hand and discernment on the other, so you had better have at least the evil under your thumb. That is the main of it. Smaller details you can work out yourself – you seem intelligent enough, though you should govern your impulsiveness. Throwing yourself in front of lances to save devils who deserve only condemnation is not the way to rule your world. As the Earl of Phantomhive, you hold immense power because of your knowledge, skills and cunning. The crown of England fears you even as it needs you, and the powers of heaven and hell, darkness and balance, tussle over your fate. Sparing a devil you could better use as a weapon is not a wise step for one such as you to take."

"I'll determine that for myself, Mister Ambrose," Ciel says, getting to his feet as his visitor does. "I thank you for your insights, but I must govern my own decisions and my household as I see fit. Otherwise, who would I be to govern the underworld?"

"I hope you will not come to regret the way you choose to live."

Sebastian opens the door of the withdrawing room for Ambrose, revealing Baldroy and Mey-Rin in the passageway with their weapons at the ready.

"Are these all the people you can trust to staff your mansion?" Ambrose asks as he pulls on his coat, eyeing the soldier-chef, sniper-maid, the superhumanly strong gardener further out near the entrance hall, and the vague steward who has just set down a cup of green tea on a side cabinet.

"They are all the people I require," Ciel replies, walking with Ambrose into the foyer.

"You could do with a lot more," the man murmurs, pausing in the main doorway before stepping outside, suddenly stumbling, and clutching the stone balustrade for support.

Sebastian catches him by the arm, but Ambrose slaps his hands away. "Don't touch me, unclean thing."

"Mister Ambrose, what is wrong?" Ciel asks sharply.

"Nothing I have not expected. With the remaining resources at my disposal, I have perhaps a few months to live. I won't die beautiful either, child," he chuckles. "Well, it's nothing I haven't deserved. No mortal should live as long as I have."

"Mister Ambrose!" the earl cries as the man tries to pull himself upright again, only to collapse against the balustrade.

"Help him," Sebastian orders Finnian and Baldroy.

The visitor flinches when touched, but Baldroy growls at him: "Hey, if you'll be snapping at them who're only trying to help you, you're none too wise a man."

He relaxes a little when he sees that the men helping him up are human, then passes out in their hands.

"Young Master," Sebastian says quietly. "Much as I would love to toss him into his hired brougham and send him on his way, I am obliged to inform you that I sense Carsten out there, full of rage. He's heading steadily in this direction."

"We must shelter Ambrose," Ciel decides. "I'm not delighted about it, but we can't throw him to Carsten in the state he's in."

"I thought you would say that. Which room, then?"

"North wing, guest room furthest in along the corridor."

"Very well, my lord."

Sebastian instructs Baldroy and Finnian to take Ambrose to the north wing, then pays the driver of the brougham what he would have got had he taken his passenger to his intended destination. Ambrose had apparently meant to head for the port and sail for Germany. Sebastian gives the driver what he is owed, and takes all of Ambrose's cases down from the carriage.

The butler locks the main door and casts over the manor his own brand of demonic power through a simple spell that will do for the time being to prevent Carsten from entering easily. He takes the cases to the guest room where Baldroy is removing Ambrose's coat, and Finny his shoes. Ambrose has regained consciousness, but remains weak.

Ciel watches silently from the doorway as his servants put the man to bed, and Sebastian stores the cases neatly in the empty wardrobe.

"My... papers..." Ambrose mumbles.

"If your papers are in your cases, then everything is in the wardrobe," Sebastian tells him.

"The child must know..."

"If you can stabilise your condition, we will give you whatever reasonable assistance you require to do it, then you can talk of other things later," the earl assures him. "I do not think that calling for a physician would help you?"

"No physicians. Not yet. Maybe two or three weeks later, when I look old enough to match the age at which I should have died," the man murmurs.

"Ehhh?" goes Mey-Rin, puzzled by the odd comment.

"You may leave us now," Ciel tells the three servants. "Sebastian will tell you more about Mister Ambrose later."

"Of course he won't tell them about himself, will he, the beast?" the guest remarks, eyeing Sebastian, when the others have left the room.

"Carsten is hunting you down as we speak," Ciel states. "I won't feed you to him in the state you're in – it would be like throwing a rabbit to a tiger. But whilst you are under my roof, and under my protection, I expect you to conduct yourself as a guest ought to. Any more insulting words about the members of my household, and the wolf out there _will_ get his meal. Now, what can I do for you so that you do not expire in this room today?"

"Just let me rest. My magic will gradually release another store of the life forces I have in reserve. When all the stores are used up, I will die, as perhaps I should have long ago. I do not know if God will accept my soul, for I have had too much time to sin. But at least the judgement will be in His hands, not burnt up in some fee I must pay to a noxious creature for its pathetic services."

"If that remains your concern, you should know that Sebastian no longer claims my soul," Ciel reveals at last.

"Ah, then you have devised your own way of taming him, after all?" Ambrose asks, pleased.

"For so old and knowledgeable a mortal, you really can be most obtuse," Sebastian states. "Your spell damaged our contract beyond repair."

"Then why– how–?" the man gasps.

"I saved my young master from the shadow of the spell because I wanted to. I remain by his side because I want to, and because he wishes it. Ponder that while you rest in his home, and while I go out there to keep at bay the one who wants to shred you with his bare fangs and claws."

"Rest, Mister Ambrose," Ciel says, before he and Sebastian leave the room and close the door after them.

"How close is Carsten?" Ciel asks the butler once they are in the corridor.

"Close."

"Can you see him off?"

"I shall do my best. Do not step out of doors until I am done with him. You, the servants and Ambrose will be shielded if you remain within these walls."

"If it comes down to choosing between your safety and Ambrose's life, I will order Baldroy to throw Ambrose out of the window," Ciel tells him firmly.

"Let us hope it does not come to that, my lord. What sort of reputation for hospitality would the Phantomhive manor acquire if it is ever discovered that we throw guests out of our windows?"

***

Sebastian glides down from the tops of the trees in the forest bordering the Phantomhive mansion, to block the path of the devil advancing towards the great house.

"You'll go no further," the butler announces to the other, who comes to an abrupt halt.

Carsten looks different from when they last met. His dark-gold hair falls around his head instead of being combed neatly back, his brown eyes flash with glimmers of demon fire, and his garments are casually worn, white shirt half-undone, no tie, and a long black coat that streams out behind him in the wind. He wears high boots now, not the tame, laced shoes his former master put him in.

"You _know_ what he did to me," the demon snarls. "I am owed vengeance and blood – you would do the same if he had lured you into a trap by purporting to seek a contract, only to cast his old magic at you and keep you on a vile set of leashes and strings, like a puppet, for five decades!"

"I know," Sebastian agrees. "But it goes against my young master's principles to serve him up to you while he is sick and weak. So I must oppose you for now."

"I demand vengeance!" Carsten hisses, leaping in the direction of the manor only to be met in mid-air by the butler, who beats him back with a slash of an ungloved hand, black fingernails transformed into talons. Carsten himself sheds his dark leather gloves and extends his claws, then launches himself at his fellow-devil. "I still have nothing against you, but I will rip through you to get to that bastard if I must."

"You think too much of yourself if you believe you can tear through me," Sebastian smiles.

"You think too little of me if you believe that I can't," the other growls.

A vicious thrust of a booted foot nearly catches Sebastian in the face, but the butler executes a neat back flip which turns full-circle and drives hard into the ankle of Carsten's supporting leg. Carsten falls forward onto his hands, then springs aside off his palms as Sebastian stabs his elbow downward, nearly making contact with his opponent's back. Both males are on the ground for a second. With equal swiftness, they leap off the earth that soils their garments and re-engage ferociously, forearms clashing with wrists, feet blocking dagger-sharp fingers, knees connecting with knuckles. Carsten aims a blow at Sebastian's abdomen, but a balletic spring into the air leaves the former punching the air while the other kicks him in the face.

Carsten staggers backwards, blood spurting up into his mouth. He swallows, for it will return to his body anyway, and spits out these words at Sebastian: "Why do you fight so intently for that slip of a child who is no longer your master? You owe him no answers, no loyalty. You are bound by no covenant. Ambrose means nothing to you, so let me pass, let me at him, and you can make it up to the boy later."

"Unacceptable. The boy will never let me forget it if I allow you through, and _you_ are not the one who has to live with him."

"That brat really has you by the bollocks, hasn't he?" Carsten sneers. "What is it he gives you that you refuse to look for elsewhere? Sweet blood, eager little mouths and snug arseholes are aplenty in this world. What is so remarkable about that skinny sack of flesh and bones you worked so damnably hard to save from that damaged spell?"

"Nothing that you would understand," Sebastian answers grimly, before his left foot connects with the side of Carsten's head, sending him spinning into the trees. He springs over to the flailing demon, snaps his bleeding head up by his hair, and warns him: "Insult my young master, or attempt to reach the house one more time, and I will do you so much damage that you'll be healing till the day hell starts spewing snowflakes."

"I've earned the right to skin Ambrose alive," Carsten snarls. "You know I have."

"Not while the child decides otherwise. Why don't you wait and watch? If Ambrose's soul ends up beyond your reach, maybe you were never meant to torment him; if his consciousness is rejected by God and ends up in our realm, you'll have a long time to torture that soul as you please."

"I don't trust that bastard out of my sight. He'll do something like live for another three hundred years!" he snaps, trying to loosen Sebastian's grip.

The butler slams the other demon's face into the ground, and again yanks his head up by the hair. "No more nonsense. You are most _disrespectfully_ infringing upon a fellow-devil's territory without his permission. Did no one school you in etiquette?"

Carsten struggles, but to no effect.

"You may have been locked up too long, and had too many Bible passages read to you to remember, but we devils do not intrude on one another's territories unless we are seeking war, or perhaps a _mate_ ," Sebastian reminds him with a touch of mockery. "You're not here to court me now, are you?"

"Do not flatter yourself. The configurations of your physique and personality hold no appeal for me," Carsten scowls.

Sebastian laughs, leans in one more time to bare his fangs at him in warning and remind him: "No closer to the manor for you." Then he releases him and jumps a good distance away.

"Ask him if he'll see me," the other demon says unexpectedly.

"Ask who?"

"The bastard."

"Missing his tender discipline already?"

"Is that the constant theme of your fantasies? Masters rutting with their servants?"

"Is that such a bad thing?" Sebastian smiles.

"Just ask him."

"I'll do that. But he barely tolerates my presence as it is. He'll not want two of us near him – and I will not let you near my young master again."

"I have no interest in stealing your child. Ask him for me."

Sebastian considers the request, nods, springs out of the forest, and returns alone to the manor.

***

"Is it a trap?" Ciel wonders, when Sebastian informs him about Carsten's wish to see Ambrose. "Is this a cunning plan of Ambrose's to stay in my home in an apparent state of weakness, then bring in Carsten, who may still be under his control but instructed to act as if he is not? Together, they can do as much harm as they did to us before."

"That would be a devious plan indeed," his butler replies. "However, I am reasonably certain that devil is fully unchained now. I am also very certain that Ambrose has lost much of his power, and is mere weeks away from death."

"If you are quite sure, I have no objections to the meeting, provided they do not tear my house apart. But we will have to ask Ambrose if he is ready to meet his former slave. He must know that Carsten badly wants to torture and kill him."

In the north wing, they put the question to Ambrose, who has recovered enough to sit up.

"I'm dying anyway," the man laughs in response when informed of the request.

"Think about it. Let us know when you decide," Ciel tells him, before he is called away by Tanaka, who informs him that Lady Elizabeth has telephoned the manor and wishes to speak with him.

Alone with Sebastian, Ambrose asks: "Is it true, what you said earlier? That you will no longer claim the child's soul, and are remaining with him to assist him, purely because you wish to?"

"I do not lie, Mister Ambrose. You and your Bible may condemn the Father of Lies and brand all devils the same. But beyond the essential similarities of cruelty and violence, we are as individual as humans in our characters and motivations, and our readiness to learn. I will protect the child now, and in the future, and I will _be_ his evil, so that he does not have to be devoured by it. I can be the shadow to the shadow of the crown. And then I will free him from their command."

"I do not approve of your closeness to him. But if truly you will be his power of evil without taking his soul, there may be hope for him," Ambrose murmurs thoughtfully. "I warn you, though: the royal family won't release him easily. They need _their_ shadow to live in brightness."

"I have little hope of Victoria freeing him, but if Edward does not do as his conscience advises, then I shall _become_ his deeply troubling and painfully insistent conscience till the day he dies."

"You are a peculiar devil."

"You are not the first to say so."

"Hmm."

"About Carsten: are you at all inclined to see him?"

"I shall consider the ramifications of acceding to his request. I will give Lord Phantomhive my answer tomorrow."

"Well then, rest soundly, Mister Ambrose."


	25. Disorder

Ciel lights a taper on the new nightstand which graces the opposite side of the bed from his usual one. He has had this piece of furniture here ever since the right side of the bed – right if he lies in it, left if he stands facing it – became Sebastian's a month ago.

He has developed some dexterity at striking matches and lighting tapers by himself too, in that time.

If he tucks back the bed curtain, the small light the flame casts is just enough for him to see Sebastian by. His devil is asleep. No, not really asleep in the way Ciel understands it, but close enough. It is a state in which he can rest, even dream, without reacting to every movement and sound, yet remain aware of what is happening around the manor so that all within will be safe. Ciel mentally adds to the list of roles Sebastian plays that of "manor guard dog".

He draws the covers down, rests his head on Sebastian's stomach, over the nightshirt, and stares up at the demon's face from this perspective. The light is too weak for him to make out every feature, but he can see enough. More interestingly, with his ear pressed to his butler's abdomen, he hears complete silence. Nothing rumbles through his guts. Nothing churns in his tummy.

In the past, Ciel had often pressed his head to his mother's and father's stomachs while being hugged by them, or while lying in bed between them. There were always funny little gurgles which made him laugh, suggestions of the movement of food and water deep within which drew giggles from him.

His butler has a silent body. It amuses Ciel in a different way from his parents' humanity. He shifts his head up that warm but unmoving torso and presses his ear to his chest. Sebastian's heart normally beats quite regularly – he has blood in his veins, after all – but its circulation is not essential for his survival. He normally breathes regularly too, but again, breathing is not vital.

Tonight, he has no heartbeat. His chest does not rise and fall. Ciel listens to the silence and wonders how he will know for sure if and when Sebastian should really ever die. As he ponders that, a surge of blood, a powerful throb of the demon's heart, and a deep inhalation stir the flesh beneath his head, and Ciel jumps. Sebastian chuckles.

"You did that on purpose," the earl mutters, his own heart pitter-pattering.

"Of course I did. Why aren't you asleep?"

"I awoke from a dream. Then I just wanted to hear if anything was moving inside your body."

"You usually sleep through the night. My presence seems to interfere with that."

"You've spent little enough time here since Ambrose came. I don't care if I don't sleep through the night."

Sebastian has indeed spent few nights here in the month since Percival Ambrose moved into the north wing. Their three-hundred-year-old guest's arrival was followed within days by the return of Soma and Agni from the Continent, Carsten's daily admission to the house under strict conditions and only for certain hours of the day, and frequent visits by Lady Elizabeth. Although it would be easy for Sebastian to slip unobserved into Ciel's room after bedtime, the earl and butler have agreed that with so much activity around the manor, it is best for Sebastian to be in his room most nights, in case the servants need him.

When he sleeps upstairs, it is a secret indulgence. It has become a comforting routine for them, curling up with or stretching out beside each other, though it has not gone much beyond that. The earl has largely accepted his lack of full preparedness for too much intimacy with anyone, and the need to give himself time to grow up a little more before exploring this aspect of the adult world that he knows nothing healthy about.

Still, he enjoys kissing his devil – especially when, like now, Sebastian pulls him firmly towards him and gives him a long, deep caress, mouth to mouth, tongue to tongue, a light brushing of tooth against fang.

"Sleep," Sebastian says, once they end the kiss. "In a few hours, we'll face the chaos of the manor again. This is all the peace we have these days."

Ciel sits up to blow out the taper, careful not to let any wax droplets splatter onto the preserved sterling silver rose that rests on the nightstand. He snuggles back down against Sebastian's front and mischievously presses his bottom to his butler's privates, his boldness fuelled by trust and the security of knowing that this peculiar devil in his bed will not allow it. As expected, those elegant but devilishly strong fingers make contact with his derriere in a second and pinch him smartly.

"Ouch!" he hisses, but in the darkness, he has a smile on his face – the hint of a true smile, not the cynical smirk that has graced his features for over three years. He is then seized and wrapped securely in an embrace of arms and legs going over and around him. He squirms and grumbles, but sleep he does very soon, ensconced in a cocoon of demonic limbs and flesh beneath which all is silence.

He is no longer awake to sense it when Sebastian himself smiles in the darkness, fills his lungs with a deep breath of his master's scent, and presses a kiss to his soft hair before he too closes his eyes and indulges himself with a return to the world of dreaming.

***

At midday, Sebastian glides through the manor, outwardly unflappable as always, but wishing internally that everything except Ciel would go to hell.

He loves the anarchy of a bloodbath, and the chaos of despair, but this disorder in the manor offends all his sensibilities. He is violently tempted to snatch his young master up, burst through the roof of the mansion with the boy safe in his arms, then set fire to the whole damned place and everything inside it.

Percival Ambrose has been lying in the north wing for a little over four weeks now, dying by inches, constantly cautioning Ciel that he must be careful not to be doomed like the earls before him.

Carsten has been skulking about, itching to rend Ambrose limb from limb, but wanting also the satisfaction of relentlessly troubling him. He seeks ongoing explanations from him about why he did the things he did, deriving a new sense of devilish contentment from seeing him die slowly – old, weak, wrinkled, sometimes incontinent, and often in pain.

Soma and Agni have settled back in as if they were never away, except that Soma is full of tales about their experiences in Denmark and France, and the goodness of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The Bengali prince is constantly underfoot like a badly trained puppy, while Agni heroically tries to make everything right for his master and the manor staff, which makes Sebastian wonder if he is supposed to come off as an uncaring monster in comparison. Soma accepts without question Ambrose's presence as Ciel's taking pity on a sick and friendless old acquaintance of his great-grandfather's; Agni is less naive, sensing unusual energies from the man, but too polite to keep questioning their host.

Elizabeth has visited four times in four weeks, and is here again for a three-day stay with her mother's permission, her maid Paula in tow. She is planning a small party to cheer up the manor and give everybody, including that "sick old gentleman who knew my great-grandfather Phantomhive", and the servants, an opportunity to dress up prettily and enjoy themselves.

All of which is well within Sebastian's considerable abilities to cope with. Except that the prophet of doom in the north wing is affecting the young master's mood, Soma must be firmly yet politely handled, Agni's suspicions must be soothed, Carsten must be watched closely, and Elizabeth freely exercises her undeniable right to openly express her devotion to Ciel while Sebastian in contrast must be particularly discreet. It is becoming quite _trying_.

"Not that you will care, but breakfast was hardly edible," Ambrose snipes in a thin voice as the butler enters the guest room. "I shall tell the earl that I must have food that's easier to swallow – when he has time to spare from being molested by you."

"Your breakfast was the softest of rice porridge, Mister Ambrose, and our private activities are none of your business," Sebastian says politely, setting a basin and pitcher on the dresser, for the man needs to wash before and after each meal now, so badly does he drool and spill his food, despite Finnian's dedicated attempts to help him spoon up his meals carefully. "Please do not trouble His Lordship over petty matters, and mind your tongue – Finnian is on his way."

Finny enters the room a minute after Sebastian. He has been playing valet to Ambrose for the past month, for the man likes his good-natured innocence. He and the other staff have been discreetly briefed about Ambrose's supernatural history, and have seen him aging before their eyes, gaining years by the day. His deterioration was rapid at the start, when his body withered dramatically during his first fortnight at the manor. The process has slowed, and the physicians he has seen have issued drugs to relieve some of his physical discomfort, but he is steadily inching through the final leg of his long life.

"Come, Mister Ambrose, I'll help you wash," Finny says cheerfully, as Sebastian closes the door and heads for the kitchen.

"Mister Sebastian, one of the fish we're supposed to cook for lunch is still alive," comes the complaint from Baldroy as Sebastian enters to pick up the plate of minced beef and mashed potatoes intended for Ambrose.

"Then kill it."

"Ho! Ho! Mister Carsten let the carriage horses out of their stalls and they're now in the Christmas rose garden!" laughs Tanaka, in one of his full-blown states of barely knowing what he is doing.

"Baldroy, Finny is busy upstairs. Please help to catch the horses and put them into the paddock beside the stables, before you kill the fish."

"Mister Sebastian! Lady Elizabeth is trying to undress me and put me into an obscene dress she wants me to wear at the party!" Mey-Rin squeals as she sprints into, then out of, the kitchen.

"Let her."

"Oh Sebaaaaastian, have you seen Ciel? I can't find him anywhere!" Soma cries the moment the devil passes the morning room.

"Lord Phantomhive is hiding from you, Your Highness."

"Mister Sebastian, how could you tell the maid to allow herself to be put into an obscene dress?" Agni demands as the butler makes his way upstairs.

"She would probably look very good in it, wouldn't you agree?"

"Mister Sebastian, have you seen my lady? A message has come for her from Lady Midford!" Paula wails from the top of the staircase of the north wing.

"Lady Elizabeth is undressing Mey-Rin somewhere in the bowels of the manor."

"Oh!" Paula cries and trips down the stairs, leaving the third level of the north wing clear for Sebastian to carry Ambrose's lunch to his room, and leave Finny to feed him.

He knows exactly where Ciel is. He senses him in one of the numerous rooms on the second level of the south wing. Those chambers are near the study, beautifully furnished, but except for Tanaka's sitting room, the rest are rarely used. The earl is in one of them, doubtless reclining on a sofa which has its back to the door, quietly reading a book, so that if Soma puts his head in, he will not see him.

Sebastian returns to the ground floor, strides towards the back of the house, and exits through the conservatory. He does not enter the gardens, but turns left towards the stables. There, he finds Carsten watching dispassionately as an annoyed Baldroy casts dirty looks at the visitor he knows as "Mister Wolf" while leading towards the paddock the first of the escaped horses.

"It's too early for me to be admitted to the house," Carsten murmurs uninterestedly, not looking at Sebastian, but at the roses.

The agreed hours at which he may visit Ambrose, under strict supervision by Sebastian and Ciel, are one to three in the afternoon. For his own reasons, outside those hours, he chooses not to leave the grounds. Instead, he lurks in the forest, sits with the horses in the stable, and sometimes strolls in the gardens.

"You got what you wanted from Ambrose a month ago. Why do you insist on remaining here, and seeing him daily?" Sebastian asks.

The day after Carsten's request had been put to Ambrose, the man had acquiesced, and the devil had called. As a precaution, Ambrose and Sebastian had worked together to erect a magical barrier around half his room, preventing Carsten from crossing the invisible line to get his hands on his former master.

But the demon had calmed down significantly from the day before, and did nothing foolish like hurl himself at the barrier or shriek hysterically. He had only demanded bitterly of the man: "Where did you hide it? Tell me where it is."

"What is the use of clinging to that thing?" Ambrose had asked. "I removed it because you dwelt too much on it. It distracted you as nothing else could."

"Tell me!" Carsten had demanded in a raised voice. "You took it from me forty-nine years ago and concealed it with magic somewhere. I want it back!"

Ambrose had shaken his head, but eventually answered: "I sealed it in a box and buried it under the beech tree at my Dresden house."

Carsten had snarled a proper devil's snarl – bared fangs and all – and shot out of the window so quickly that to Ciel's eyes, he appeared to have vanished from the room.

Two days later, he returned, and Sebastian had at once identified the new item on his person: a gold ring set with a garnet. It was obviously too small to be his own, but he wore it on a silver chain around his neck.

"A memento from your first contract?" Sebastian had asked when he sprinted out to the forest to prevent the other demon from going close to the manor until he could ascertain his motives.

"Not my first, but the one I think of most," Carsten had admitted grudgingly.

"Did you release her?"

"No. I devoured her. I didn't want to. She was adamant, however, that a contract must be honoured. She gave me her ring, and she was brave. But she still cried with pain as I killed her, and it does not please me to feel her consciousness here within me, mingled with the hatred and despair of everything else I have consumed. After her, I never again cared for anyone I was contracted to. It is a foolish weakness."

"Yet you value that ring."

"It is the only thing left of her that is whole and untainted. You know what I mean – everything else is contaminated. The bastard took it from me when he saw I was often able to touch it when he had ordered me to do nothing but keep still and listen to him. It gave me a small escape from his control. Damn him."

"Was that why you so badly wanted to get at him? To demand the location of the ring?"

"That was the first thing, but I would have peeled his flesh off his bones after recovering this," Carsten had hissed, eyes flashing. "I still want to – peel off a strip and eat it before his eyes, peel off another, and repeat the process, until he is nothing but bones and organs, but still alive to see the last of his flesh in my mouth."

"I doubt he would taste good," Sebastian had remarked matter-of-factly. "In any case, my young master will not let his guest be harmed, and I will not let anything in or around this manor be harmed. Every human and animal on and around these grounds belongs in my territory, and belongs to me. If you must hunt, hunt elsewhere. The creatures here are mine."

"I know," Carsten snapped. "Your territory. Your humans. Your beasts. But I want satisfaction from that man."

"I shall convey your desire to my young master. Perhaps we can arrange something."

The resulting visit was a disaster, hell breaking loose in the north wing as Carsten clawed at the barrier and cursed Ambrose with foul demonic language that literally smoked the air. Sebastian had to shield Ciel from that explosive rage, assure Lizzie, Soma and Agni that the situation with "Mister Ambrose's estranged ward" was under control, and bodily remove Carsten before he brought the wing down with his fury.

But a strictly supervised visit the day after went reasonably smoothly. Since then, Carsten has been seeing Ambrose daily, venting his rage by questioning his former master, demanding answers, arguing with him that his beliefs are not the only beliefs in the universe, and not every being in the world is required to agree with him.

The devil is rather volatile. It is partly owing to his personality, which is far more petulant than Sebastian's. But the butler also suspects that the decades of enslavement have slightly unhinged him – not beyond recovery, though, for he is gradually regaining his equilibrium. On the whole, he is surprisingly restrained. However, Ambrose has, on four occasions now, provoked him so badly that Sebastian has had to calm his fellow-devil by seizing the lapels of his coat, hauling him out the window, and beating some sense into him in the forest.

"Damn it, Mister Ambrose!" Ciel has snapped at the dying man each time. "Stop provoking him! See someone else's point of view for once in your bloody long life!"

Ambrose has chuckled hoarsely every time instead of admitting his wrongs, and simply told Ciel another story from his past. About Susan Rothstein. Or how Queen Elizabeth's desire to preserve the illusion of beauty and youth even in her old age first sparked his interest in immortal youthfulness. Or how his family was neither Roman Catholic nor Protestant in the religious turbulence of Henry VIII's and Queen Mary's reigns, but secretly agnostic. For they believed they were the "true Ambroses", descended from Emrys of Carmarthen, also known as Emrys of Myrddin, misnamed in the Latin tongue as Merlin Ambrosius, when he became famous as the great Merlin from Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Or how he was the first in his family to feel drawn to Roman Catholicism, which he began to practise discreetly in an age when it was safer to be Protestant.

These fascinating stories distract Ciel momentarily. But the earl is objective enough to know that while Ambrose is wise in his own ways, he is close-minded and foolish in many others. He indulges him as a dying elder, and focuses on keeping the meetings between him and Carsten private so that the rest of the household will not overhear terrifying things about wrathful devils, ancient magicians, and the enslavement of things mostly hidden from the human world.

Today, after Carsten spends his two hours calmly enough with Ambrose, he leaves the house and stalks the forest, while Sebastian and Ciel help Ambrose settle in for an afternoon nap. The man is growing vague, foggy, somewhat like Tanaka at his worst. Two days ago, when he took a bad turn, Sebastian found and brought a Roman Catholic priest to the manor to administer the last rites. He recovered somewhat afterward, but the end is near.

He now rambles disconnectedly to Ciel as Sebastian adjusts his pillows and blanket: "I loved her once... Susan... she fled, selfish... wanted to be her own monster... didn't want to be accountable to me. Had to stop her. She was so beautiful. Obsessed with initials, she was. Her S.E. maiden initials, same as Sophia Easton's married initials. Meant much to her. She was obsessed with initials, and I with the meanings of names. Ambrose was a Latin mistake. His name was never Merlin. Emrys it was, becoming Ambrose. We should have been Emryses. Your name comes from the Latin too, you know, indirectly. Ciel, like Celia, from Caelius, the Roman clan name – from 'caelum', meaning 'heaven'. Something in there of 'cerulean' too, blue, like your eye. So you're heaven, and you're blue..."

His words become indistinguishable murmurs as he falls asleep.

A trail of drool starts creeping down his chin. Sebastian wipes it up with a napkin, but another slick trail follows minutes later. The earl feels sorry for Ambrose in a way, and wonders if he is paying for all his years of stolen youth, and those years of stealing Carsten's freedom. Harangued by his former slave, cleaned up several times a day like an infant, losing his clarity of mind – is this punishment enough for the errors of his long life?

Ciel frowns as Sebastian steps quickly out through the invisible barrier. That barrier is designed to prevent Carsten from crossing it, but it hurts Sebastian too. Though it was erected with his help, he feels distinctly uncomfortable each time he crosses the shield, for Ambrose's powers are unpleasant for demons while having no effect on humans. Ciel does not like Sebastian to go through the discomfort, while Sebastian genuinely sympathises with Carsten, who suffered fifty years of enslavement by that magic.

"Lizzie hopes to have Ambrose nicely dressed and cheered up by her party, but I doubt he'll be able to sit through it," Ciel says to Sebastian as they walk through the north wing.

"We can seat him next to Mister Tanaka, and let them be doddery together," Sebastian suggests. "Perhaps one will drool on the other, who will pour green tea over him in retaliation."

"You're evil," says the earl with a smirk that implies he can be just as wicked.

"What else would I be?"

"So you'll do the same to me when I am old?" Ciel asks casually. "Sit me beside someone else who is losing his mind and let us drool over each other?"

"No," Sebastian declares solemnly. "I would wipe up your drool most attentively, sit with you and read to you as much as you like, or carry you wherever you want to go. You are not Percival Ambrose. You are my only Ciel Phantomhive."

Ciel lets a small, resigned laugh escape his lungs in a huff. "It _will_ come to that if I live long enough, you know – me, ancient, drooling and senile."

"Very likely, yes."

"Ambrose has given me his papers, some of which teach one how to live off ghouls and devils as he did, but I don't want that. I was never made to be a parasite."

"I know."

"I'll turn into a wrinkled heap of flesh like he is now. Perhaps you shouldn't stay for that pathetic scenario."

"I would ask nothing less than to be allowed to remain with you till the very end," Sebastian declares softly. "Ambrose speaks much nonsense, but he is right that your name is most likely from the Latin caelum, heaven. Paradise was once lost to me, but _you are_ my heaven, whatever becomes of your physical form. Just as I will be your evil so you need not be devoured by it, you will be my refuge."

They pause at the end of the corridor, where Sebastian cups Ciel's left cheek with his hand, and Ciel lifts his hand to clasp the back of his devil's fingers. An exchange of assurances. A sign of peace, before they descend once again into the cheerful chaos of the manor.

***

"Look, Ciel! Even Mister Ambrose is smiling!" Lizzie gushes that evening, delighted to see that the old man is gazing at the decorations with pleasure, and eating a trifle without spilling too much onto his bib.

He had been introduced to her three weeks ago as a very old acquaintance of her great-grandfather Phantomhive, staying at the manor because he was ill and had not one servant to care for him. Lizzie's cheerful ways have brightened several of his afternoons, and he has been careful to keep from her the truth about his age, and his relationship with Carsten, passed off as a ward of his who has fallen out violently with him.

"It's kind of you to have arranged this party, and to have invited Ambrose, Soma, Agni, and all my staff and servants," Ciel smiles as he spins round the room with Lizzie in his arms. Her happiness is infectious. She is beautiful, and he is not unmoved by it. For once, she has chosen not to wear something pink, but a confection of sea-green silk and cream lace that brings out the emerald of her eyes, and complements her blonde curls.

"Everything in this house has felt so... jumbled... this whole month, since you returned from your last visit to London, and your guests returned from the Continent," she explains. "I wanted everyone here, including your staff, to enjoy themselves for an evening. That's why I 'borrowed' some of the musicians my father patronises, and got our footmen to serve so your people would not have to work at all. If only Mister Ambrose's ward had not refused to come, he might be as happy as everyone else is now. I wanted to bring a little happiness to this manor. I hope to _always_ bring happiness to this place."

She sounds mysteriously grown-up as she says that, and he looks at her, intrigued. She is turning into a woman before his eyes, and he wonders if she sees him becoming a man, or if to her he is still a child.

"I'm still not fond of parties, but I do thank you for this, Lizzie," he replies sincerely. Despite his frequent awkwardness in the face of her enthusiasm for things he does not care to understand – including their engagement – he is genuinely fond of her, and cares deeply for her. In fact, he can quite easily see himself as an adult with her beside him, his wife, his lady, his Countess, though he is increasingly uncertain that this destiny planned by their parents would be the best for her or himself.

Lizzie's eyes widen and shine at his thanks, and she glows throughout the simple waltz – one he can manage without trampling on her toes. "Ciel..." she begins in a curious tone of voice, staring at him the way she does whenever something new occurs to her. "Oh, Ciel, I do believe you've grown a little taller!"

"Have I?" he asks, although he already knows it, for Sebastian brought it to his attention three days ago. _You've grown half an inch since the start of the year. Your eyes are now level with my third nightshirt button when we are barefooted. I have to lean down just a little less now to kiss you. Like this..._

He glances across the room at Sebastian, who for once is not serving food or wine, or playing a musical instrument for their entertainment. The butler is dutifully dancing with Paula, as expected of the highest-ranking male servant and the highest-ranking lady's maid at a party to which the staff have been invited. Soma is chatting animatedly about something or other with Baldroy; Finny is saying something about horses to the Midfords' coachman; and Ambrose is apparently holding a decent conversation with Tanaka.

Agni, meanwhile, is gallantly shielding Mey-Rin with his shawl, for the fashionable, champagne-coloured satin dress Lizzie has put her in is exposing too much of her arms and decolletage for her comfort. Ciel shakes his head – every male living in this manor has seen Mey-Rin, skirts swirling high around her shapely thighs as she guns down enemies – but show a little upper arm and a lot of neck and shoulders, and she wants to dig a hole in the ground and hide!

"Why are you shaking your head?" Lizzie laughs.

"Look what you've done to my housemaid," he answers. "She doesn't know what to do with herself in that dress."

"Ooh, Agni's russet shawl goes _very_ well with the dress," Lizzie says enthusiastically, a new sparkle in her already-bright eyes. "Oh! She's teaching him how to waltz, and he's draping the shawl carefully about her so it doesn't shift too much as they move. I think he _likes_ her!"

"Don't read too much into it," Ciel sighs. "Agni likes everybody. Unless they try to hurt Soma."

"But don't you think they look wonderful together?" Lizzie persists. "The new eyeglasses you gave Mey-Rin make her look so much prettier, and I think Agni _notices_."

"Only a _girl_ would think of that," Ciel mutters disdainfully. But when he glances at his housemaid-sniper and the Brahmin manservant, it strikes him that they do look good together. His ten-to-thirteen-year-old mind of years past had thought that if Mey-Rin were to be paired with anyone, it would be Baldroy, as they knew each other so well. Finnian was the soft-hearted little brother to the adults at the manor, as likely to run off with a horse as with a girl. Tanaka seemed mostly past ideas of romance, especially in his vaguest moods. And Sebastian... Ciel had once seen his butler as no more than a dog; now, he rebels at the thought of his devil with anyone other than himself.

As the waltz draws to a close, Ciel prompts Lizzie: "You've only danced once with Prince Soma. He's the highest-ranking man here – you should dance with him again, as this is _your_ party. Let's walk over. He must have picked up some European customs after visiting Denmark and France with the Prince of Wales – if he doesn't know that he should ask you for the next dance when your latest partner walks you up to him, I'll have to smack him over the head with a silver tray."

Lizzie giggles, and is relieved that no trays are needed when Soma does ask. Ciel watches the prince and the young lady twirl across the floor of the grand entrance hall. He briefly has visions of his royal guest and his cousin falling madly in love, becoming husband and wife, leaving him to publicly declare that he will never marry. But it is impossible. Soma and Lizzie are both capable of being absurdly cheerful, but they look at each other only with friendliness. Ciel knows well how he and Sebastian gaze into each other's eyes; nothing of the sort is there between those two. A pity. Lord and Lady Midford would not look askance at a Bengali prince favoured by the future King of England – and back in his immensely wealthy father's good books too.

He sighs and accepts a cup of punch from one of the Midfords' footmen. As he does, he feels rather than sees Sebastian coming up beside him. Without exchanging a word, they leave the floor to Soma and Lizzie, Agni and Mey-Rin, and Baldroy and Paula, and step out of the foyer.

At once, all that is "jumbled" in the manor, as Lizzie describes it, falls away and leaves them in peace. They stand side by side behind the stone balustrade, over to the left, away from the foyer windows.

"Is Carsten still out there?" Ciel asks, gazing into the darkness, fingers linking with Sebastian's on the stone. "What's he doing?"

"Sitting in a tree, doing nothing in particular."

"Fingering that ring?"

"Yes," Sebastian replies as he touches Ciel's blue ring.

"He devoured her although he didn't want to. But that is the way of devils, is it not?"

"Mostly."

"You, of course, are always the exception."

"I like to think so."

"What will I do about Lizzie?" he asks abruptly.

"Marry her as you were meant to, if you both choose."

"What about you?"

"I will be with you to the end."

"That seems unfair to both you and her."

"Stranger arrangements have worked out in the history of mankind."

"And demonkind."

"Indeed."

Sebastian moves his hand and Ciel's off the balustrade and straightens up suddenly, looking towards the forest.

"What is it?" Ciel asks.

"Carsten. Approaching at speed."

Ciel anticipates a fight as his butler vaults over the balustrade to meet the other devil at the end of the driveway. But Sebastian soon spins around, and the two devils move smoothly towards the house.

"Something has happened to Ambrose," Sebastian explains.

"I sensed it from the forest," Carsten adds. "Something is wrong."

"He's just sleeping, as usual," Ciel remarks as the three of them slip indoors and see Ambrose sitting in his armchair, eyes closed. Tanaka is elsewhere, sipping punch which he seems to be mixing with tea.

"His condition has deteriorated sharply," Carsten insists.

"Don't disrupt the party," Sebastian tells the earl softly as he beckons Finnian over. "Finny and I will take him upstairs, through the doorway to the kitchen, so that the others are less likely to notice."

"I'll keep Lizzie occupied," Ciel says.

"You," Sebastian addresses Carsten. "Come with us."

The three males support an all-but-unconscious Percival Ambrose through the doorway that leads towards the kitchen, instead of taking the more direct route up the grand staircase, which would draw everyone's attention. Agni notices, but Ciel catches his eye and shakes his head to convey the message that he should not alarm the others.

Within minutes, Sebastian returns to the foyer to tell Ciel discreetly that he should go upstairs. The earl slips away to the north wing, and finds Ambrose in a bad state.

"Remember... everything... I told you," the ancient man says, once he is at his bedside.

"I won't forget," Ciel assures him.

"You," Ambrose indicates Sebastian. "Break your word, I'll haunt you."

"I'd like to see that," Sebastian smiles. "But I won't."

"Let down the barrier," Ambrose orders, nulling his own magic, and letting Sebastian do the rest. He beckons to Carsten with his fingers, weakly, and the devil steps closer to the bed.

Ciel and Sebastian tense, but Carsten does not move to strike, and Ambrose does not provoke him. Instead, the man smiles ruefully, and whispers with a great effort: "I'm sorry... for everything I did to you. I believed it was best for you... but I understand now that perhaps what I believed was not your belief..."

His breathing becomes laboured. He can say no more, but it is far from the end. It is only long after the party, late into the night, and many hours of speechless pain and suffering later that Percival Ambrose at last gives up the ghost, watched over by a child, a weeping gardener, and two devils, neither of whom attempt to touch his soul as it leaves for wherever it is bound.


	26. Reputation

Summer is here, and with it a note from Lord Randall to advise Ciel of the developments of a case that may affect the royal family:

" _This is a matter for the police and the courts at present, but the involvement of His Royal Highness' equerry may lead to higher orders to keep things quiet. If that happens, I would strongly recommend that you dissuade His Royal Highness from attempting to suppress anything, which will only lead to more talk."_

The earl ordinarily rejects "strong recommendations" from the Commissioner, but in this instance, he happens to agree with him.

Lord Arthur Somerset, head of the Prince of Wales' stables, has been questioned twice by Scotland Yard in the space of a little over a month, regarding his alleged patronage of a brothel at Cleveland Street which employed boys as prostitutes. The brothel operator has fled, but five of the boys who worked for him, aged between fifteen and eighteen, have been arrested or questioned. Two of them have named Lord Somerset as a client; other well-known aristocrats have also been identified as customers.

Ciel has not heard from the royal family about this matter. Through the spring and early summer, the queen has written to him only about minor matters of underworld crime that he and Sebastian have dealt with easily. Thus far, very little concerning the Cleveland Street brothel arrests has run in the newspapers, for the press has not as yet got wind of the involvement of prominent nobles. The arrests of the boys have been reported as nothing terribly unusual, for brothels and prostitutes are rife in London. Elaborate establishments, including those where young children may be flogged and violated for the sexual pleasure of customers, are haunts of the rich and noble, and often winked at by the police. Only the fact that these are boy-prostitutes has been noteworthy to the papers, as sex between males of any age is against the law.

"There seems no need for the royal family to involve itself," Ciel remarks to Sebastian, Soma and Agni at lunch.

"Not yet," the butler observes. "Things may change."

"Let's hope they don't change for the worse," says the earl. "His Royal Highness is away on his summer holidays. Let us see if he demands that anything be done for or about his equerry when he returns."

"Prince Edward would be unwise to attempt to cover any of this up just because his equerry is believed to be a customer of the brothel," Soma notes. "It would truly only result in more talk, as Lord Randall says. I wouldn't like His Royal Highness to have to endure that."

"If he does bring me in, I shall advise him the best I can, although he may not listen," Ciel tells Soma, taking another spoonful of light sherry trifle filled with layers of sponge cake, cream, summer berries and a sprinkling of crumbled meringue. "How fares your London property?"

"Oh!" Soma brightens up instantly. "All the houses that my father sent me money to purchase are now tenanted. The income looks promising enough that I should no longer have to live off my father... or _you_..."

The Indian prince makes that last admission a little sheepishly, for ever since his father sent him a generous sum of money to invest, he has discovered the burden and responsibility of looking after wealth wisely. He has thus grown more aware of how childish and inconsiderate he had been to impose himself on Ciel and invite himself into his home the way he did when they first met.

"Huh," Ciel huffs, not looking up at him as he makes inroads into his dessert.

Those pieces of London property they speak of are in Soma's name, for the Raja intends them to form the inheritance this wandering son of his will receive from him. The Bengali king realises that his numerous other children will squabble over his money and property in India once he dies, so he must give Soma a separate future in Europe now, and hope that he nurtures it sensibly.

Soma and Agni have thus been spending a lot of time in London, for days at a stretch, viewing new houses and looking after the ones they have. Whenever they are at the manor, however, Ciel and Sebastian are particularly careful about their interactions, for Agni notices things that most other humans don't. He has already remarked twice to Sebastian how pleased he is that "Lord Ciel seems so much more contented with life, and with you, than he was this past winter". No doubt he would notice far more were he not spending his spare time getting to know Mey-Rin better.

" _Some_ people don't need to worry about investing their wealth responsibly, though," Soma grumbles vaguely.

Ciel knows at once that he is referring to Carsten, for he has brought him up in conversation several times since Ambrose died four months ago. To everyone's surprise, Ambrose's latest will, drawn up during his first two weeks at the manor and left in the safekeeping of his London lawyer, bestowed nearly all his possessions and wealth on "my ward, Carsten Wolf".

Carsten, who departed from the manor the night of Ambrose's death, had to be searched out by Sebastian and informed about the will. Devils, of course, have no interest in owning worldly goods, and he had only shrugged when told of his former master's decision.

"Using your Carsten Wolf identity, you could give it to someone else," Sebastian had suggested, when his fellow-devil stated that he had no use for it.

"I doubt I'll bother," the other demon had answered, before walking away.

But Soma, who has no idea that Carsten is a devil, only imagines him the luckiest fellow on earth, to be left plenty of money and property without having to be at all accountable to anyone over how he uses it – and the most ungrateful.

The good-natured prince is still very upset that Carsten did not attend Ambrose's funeral in April. Soma, Agni, Lizzie, Ciel and Sebastian, Tanaka and the servants were all there, standing by his grave as he was buried in Highgate Cemetery. Everything was handled smoothly by the Undertaker, and all paid for out of Ambrose's considerable estate. Ciel had learnt that Ambrose had, over the centuries, adopted a long line of names and identities to disguise the truth about his age. But his latest alias, created some thirty years ago, used his original name, Percival Ambrose; perhaps he had already decided by then that he wished to die. The tasteful tombstone arranged for by the Undertaker bore his date of death, without the year of his birth.

"Well," Ciel says to Soma now as they surface from their separate reveries about Ambrose and Carsten. "Perhaps some people are lucky that way, but you are called to be wiser and better. As for me, I believe what calls me now is some peace and quiet with a book in my room. Without interruption."

That, of course, is a signal to Sebastian that he should join him as soon as he can, unobserved. Discretion is essential. With the Cleveland Street affair unfolding, everyone who is aware of it has also been reminded that sexual relations between males in Great Britain are punishable by imprisonment and hard labour, and a lifetime of social disgrace.

"I don't care for the law telling me what I cannot do within the privacy of my own home, as long as I am not imprisoning, murdering, mutilating or raping anyone," Ciel sighs, once he and his devil are safely upstairs. "We shouldn't have to tiptoe about like this."

"You may not care, and it may be true that I can protect you from harm and incarceration, but I cannot protect you from social condemnation, or persecution," Sebastian cautions him. "I do not want you to be put in a position where you can only flee to places where you will be safe from British law, instead of building your strength and power here, where you belong."

"You're never afraid of anything, but you're always afraid _for_ me," Ciel sighs, leaning back against Sebastian, who in turn is propped up against the pillows stacked on the earl's bed. Sometimes, in the middle of the day, they escape to the bedroom just to spend time with each other like this.

"I must be afraid for you sometimes, because you belong in the mortal realm. I can protect you from a great deal, but if it entails taking you away from your country, your relations and friends, your manor, the only society you know, how could that be good for you?"

Ciel's immediate impulse is to declare that he doesn't care where he is as long as he is with Sebastian. He knows himself better, though, than to claim he could be entirely happy without the world he has grown up in. Still, something else reminds him that power, prestige and society are houses built of playing cards, that can be shaken and crushed by revolutions, the terrors of war, rampant disease like the plagues which wiped out large swathes of Europe's populations centuries ago, tragedies like those that befell his family, and even by gentler processes such as mere progress and change.

"I can't deny that I would be unhappy to lose my place in society, my home, and my relations," the earl says thoughtfully. "But if I had to choose between those things and being with you, I would be with you. Of course, my greedy nature simply wants to keep it all."

He smiles and lifts his face to Sebastian's, claiming a kiss. He is learning to laugh a little, and smile with more sincerity, believing for the first time in years that he can overcome the shadows of his past. "I wonder," Ciel muses with a tiny chuckle whose vibrations hum through Sebastian's mouth, "if Agni knows what we're doing."

"I hope not," Sebastian murmurs back. "He would assume I was corrupting you, and try to protect you from me."

"You're hardly doing _anything_ to me," Ciel protests.

"You're not ready."

"You keep saying that."

"Because it's true."

"But you did _that_ new thing last night."

"To celebrate your growing yet another half-inch taller since the spring."

"Do it again."

"Tonight."

"Now."

"No."

"It's an order."

"I am not your butler at this moment. You want these private times with me because you say you do not like it that at others, I have to be your butler, and you my lord."

"And I can't touch your face, or hold your hand, or have you walk beside me," Ciel remembers that he was indeed the one who had asked that they find moments alone during the day, for relief from their unbridgeable public roles. "Can't we say we've discovered that you're a gentleman, and from now on you are my tutor, so you can at least walk next to me instead of behind me? Devils like you and Carsten, and humans with supernatural powers like Ambrose – you all create documents that show you to have been born and schooled and raised in certain places at certain times, so anyone who checks on you will believe you are normal humans, am I right?"

"Even if I were your tutor – or your superior, for that matter, you could not hold my hand in public. It would never be acceptable."

Ciel wants to say that he does not like the way society imposes its expectations on private individuals, but he is a creature of that very society, with the impeccable manners of the upper classes, and the awareness that he himself looks disapprovingly on others who breach etiquette or conduct themselves poorly.

"Don't fill this time fretting over what we cannot do," Sebastian advises him with a smile. "...when there is so much else we _can_."

"Hmm..." a note of mischief steals into Ciel's voice as he turns around in Sebastian's arms to face him and nip at his jawline. "I wonder what _exactly_ those boys did with their clients in Cleveland Street..."

"I thought Your Lordship would find that affair too sordid even to mention while lying in your bed with me," Sebastian teases.

"The only thing sordid about it is the fact that money changed hands for the acts they engaged in, and that it has come under the public gaze," Ciel murmurs, nibbling Sebastian's ear. "It ought to have remained a private affair. Those boys were not kidnapped or beaten, caged or chained, or forced to do things they didn't want to do, like I was. That would have been revolting, but it's not the case here at all. They were free to come and go, willing to do what their clients wanted, for the money. And they're all at least a year older than me. They almost certainly knew exactly what they were doing, if even _I_ know this much by now..."

As he says those latter words, he cheekily rubs a bare thigh against Sebastian's crotch. He is pleased to see and feel an instantaneous reaction from the devil. Sebastian inhales sharply, his muscles tense, his garnet eyes widen fractionally, and beneath his clothing, that most responsive portion of his anatomy hardens and grows.

"No..." the demon warns Ciel at once, holding him away from his body by his narrow little waist.

"I'm only a few months away from fourteen – I'll be old enough to marry then, remember what Aunt Francis said? I certainly won't want to _marry_ at that age, but there are other things I'd like to do."

"You are not fourteen yet," Sebastian tells him, sounding almost stern. "I do not particularly care what age my mortal or immortal lovers are – demons take no note of such things. But once again, I care about this on _your_ behalf. I have never had such scruples before with any of my humans – you are the first – so don't waste my caution."

"You wanted to before, when I was sick..."

"That was before I learnt how much you meant to me. Now behave yourself."

But Ciel is at an age when he dislikes being told what to do, and once more molests Sebastian with his leg. In an instant, his demon whips them both around and pins him to the bedcovers by his wrists, crouching over him like a large cat that has just pounced on its prey.

"I _do_ want you," Sebastian purrs with a taut, dangerous smile over Ciel's startled face, pressing his alarmingly stiff and swollen member high into the boy's inner thigh. "But I am doing my best to avoid premature acts that will only damage your body and spirit, so don't _provoke_ me, my little master."

He shifts his grip from Ciel's wrists and slides his eye patch off his face with such deliberation, staring so intently into his now-unblemished eyes, that it feels to the earl as if he is being undressed. Ciel raises his hands to Sebastian's hair and draws his dark head down towards him for a deep kiss, half because he wants to, and half because he wants to hide from that penetrating garnet gaze. The demon hungrily gives in to the meeting of lips and tongues, once again pressing his erection into the earl's thigh, like a promise of things to come when he is old enough, but also a warning of what may result if he unleashes his urges too early.

Ciel shivers. His adolescent instincts push ahead, while being checked by his memory of the lesson he received on the desk of his study. At last, he submits to his butler-tutor-lover's measure of the situation. He is not disappointed, not when Sebastian unties his bow and unbuttons his shirt to lay kisses on his neck that make him moan. Nor is he disappointed with those possessive licks and nibbles that he knows will leave love bites just above his collarbones, where no one can see them as long as his shirt remains fastened. Whenever his skin is thus marked, Baldroy is never asked to see to his baths; those marks, like the emblem which once scored and altered the natural hues of his left iris, are a secret between him and his demon-lover.

Sebastian's mouth ventures a little lower down, as it did when they progressed to the _new thing_ last night, and Ciel moans again with pleasure when his lover swirls the tip of his devilishly clever tongue around his left nipple, then draws it into his mouth and sucks gently on it – he fancies it must be rather like the way witches' familiars are said to suckle on the third nipples that such women's bodies are believed to sport. He is no wizard, though he does have a true devil suckling at his unformed breast and filling his body with the warmest, yet most tingling sensations...

Sebastian stops, pulls back, and buttons Ciel's shirt.

"You haven't done the other one," the earl growls in protest, the neglected right half of his chest feeling empty and unwanted.

"That will keep for tonight," Sebastian says firmly. "Get up now. You have a music lesson this afternoon."

Ciel groans.

***

Two months later, in October, the scandal gains momentum. Ciel finds himself waiting outside the Prince of Wales' office at Buckingham Palace for Commissioner Randall to emerge. The doors are thick, and the carpeting muffles many sounds, but the earl still hears Prince Edward rumbling away inside. The name "Randall!", angrily spoken in the prince's voice, reaches his ears, followed by a furious sentence, part of which he makes out as: "...that he cannot even return briefly to England without the threat of arrest is _unacceptable_..."

Lord Randall has quite a temper himself, but before his future king, he is obliged to be calmer and more rational. He says something in reply that is inaudible to Ciel, to which a quieter response is given. The earl has no idea if Randall has soothed the prince's temper at all, but when the Commissioner steps out of the office at last, he gives a discreet shake of his head to Ciel as a warning not to overstep the mark, or he too will bear the brunt of the prince's anger.

"Phantomhive," Prince Edward acknowledges Ciel's presence the moment he steps alone into the office and the aide closes the door after him.

"Your Royal Highness," Ciel greets the prince with a bow, and waits to be told why he is here.

The prince is rearranging papers on his desk which he had clearly been referring to in his interview with Lord Randall. Having done that, he says briskly to Ciel, who remains standing: "I have not asked you to come here today with the aim of ordering any concealment or alteration of the truth, as Randall seemed to think I would do. I've told you before, and I meant it, that I do not want to be that sort of prince. I have no intention of asking that you make anything – or worse, _anyone_ – 'disappear'. But I do want to know what can be done about the fact that the head of my stables dares not even show his face in England when he has merely been _questioned_ by the police about his involvement with this... male brothel, and has not been charged with any offence. If even the man purported to be the brothel _owner_ , who has fled to Belgium, is not being pursued further by the law, it seems most unfair that Lord Arthur, only an alleged _customer_ , should be under such threat of prosecution that he is in France again after briefly scurrying back to England like a common thief! He could barely remain here above a fortnight after his grandmother's funeral! No newspapers have mentioned Somerset's name. Can he not return openly, with some dignity, and without fearing for his safety?"

"Your Royal Highness," says Ciel, drawing on his discussions with Sebastian. "That the newspapers have alluded only to 'noble lords' implicated in the case, without specifically publishing Lord Arthur's name, may be good fortune rather than a sign that all is well. It seems plain from Scotland Yard's investigations that Lord Somerset _was_ a client of the Cleveland Street brothel. That being so, whether the newspapers print his name or not, he cannot return to your service without besmirching the reputation of your household and offices. I would not recommend that anything be done to facilitate his return to England."

"I am to leave him, a son of the Duke of Beaufort, to live the life of a fugitive abroad?" Prince Edward demands.

"Sir, if you will indulge me, please allow me to elaborate on why I believe you must not only leave him to his own devices, but take the further step of speaking against him."

"Explain," the prince demands, a little displeased, but also curious. "The man made a mistake. Am I now to condemn him openly when he has not been charged?"

"I do not suggest that you turn your back on him as if he were a traitor, sir. I am saying that it is important for you to declare that you do not approve of any member of your household behaving so as to bring dishonour to his station. However, it is equally important for you to emphasise that while you condemn the unlawful acts, you wish to demonstrate Christian forgiveness, and hope that he will return to face trial," Ciel says, drawing now on the talks he has had with the vicar, John Jarvis, about how he might advise others to react to this affair.

"Why should I make _any_ public statement?" the prince asks. "Wouldn't that draw more attention to a matter that is more than unseemly as it is?"

"There is already talk amongst journalists, and in well-informed circles, about how the boys who have been arrested have been represented by Lord Arthur's lawyer, with their defence by him fully paid for by Lord Arthur. There is talk about how those boys have been sentenced to a mere few months' incarceration, when the usual sentence for such cases is at least two years' hard labour. There is even more talk about how the brothel owner's escape to Belgium was paid for by Lord Arthur, again through his lawyer. My sources are already hearing whispers that the leniency shown by the courts, and such generosity by Lord Arthur, hints at greater personages being protected from public disgrace. There are whispers that far more illustrious nobles than Lord Arthur are involved, which is why he is so eager to help those pursued to escape, and those caught to receive the lightest sentences."

"But no greater personages are involved, to the best of my knowledge," the prince says, puzzled.

"To the best of my knowledge also," Ciel agrees. "However, once something is whispered about and published, even without proof, it is hard to come out afterward and say that nothing is hidden. Far better to stand up early, and show that nothing is concealed, so that there will be less opportunity for people to suspect smoke, and from there, a fire."

"I cannot speak out against Somerset," the prince insists. "It would be poor repayment for his loyalty of service. Also, speaking against him might cause the courts to be harder on those poor boys, who only did what they did because foolish grown men created a demand for their services."

"Your Royal Highness, you would only need to condemn Lord Arthur's actions while reiterating that he has been a good and loyal subject to his queen, and an excellent member of your household. As for the boys, you could say what you have said to me. Your describing them as young persons led astray by adults will mean that those in custody will continue to be spared harshness, while those who may be arrested in future will be shown mercy, thanks to your kindness of speech about them. But to keep silent in the face of these growing whispers my sources tell me of would be, if you will pardon my bluntness, unwise."

"I hear you. But I cannot do that to Somerset. Like so many members of the aristocracy, he has his curiosities and peccadilloes, but is otherwise a very honourable and decent fellow."

The prince speaks with the supreme confidence of a man whose love for women is so widely known that he has no insecurities whatsoever with regard to his equerry's involvement with a "sodomite scandal". Yet, he refuses to make a public statement against such misdeeds, because he imagines it will be a betrayal of a loyal servant.

Ciel does not press the point. He has been speaking purely as the Earl of Phantomhive advising his prince about what could be a bigger scandal in the making. As a private individual, he himself has been engaging in acts considered criminal by the laws of this land. He thus chooses not to play too aggressive a role in condemning the deeds of men and boys who in his eyes have done nothing wrong other than be caught by the police.

***

Upon his return from Buckingham Palace, Ciel goes to his study and looks through some of the many letters, journal entries and other papers Ambrose willed to him. One of his journal scribblings reads:

" _The crowned heads of England dare not release the Phantomhives from their dark service. They are too useful to them. Just as I could not bear to cut my various succubi loose, although I knew it was wrong of me to sustain my youth and health by stealing the lives of other humans, the crown of England cannot bring itself to do without the particular services the Phantomhives can render. I, a mere private man, clung to my succubi for more than 230 years, and thereafter to my enslaved devil, for sustenance. What more the English throne? Surely they will cling to their shadow for two thousand years to come..."_

"I won't let them keep you chained," Sebastian says from the doorway, making Ciel jump, for he had not realised that he had left the door ajar.

"And _how_ did you know what I was reading?" Ciel asks, a little miffed, as his demon comes over to pour him a cup of Ceylon tea.

"I have memorised all the papers Ambrose left, which you asked me to read in case you missed anything of importance. I could tell at once which sheet of paper you were holding."

"Clever bastard," Ciel mutters, taking a sip of the tea.

"There'll be worse trouble soon, thanks to the Prince of Wales' refusal to take a stronger stand. When that happens, he will remember your wisdom and your call for openness, and he will not forget it when the time comes for him to decide if he will let Phantomhive be an ordinary earldom like any other earldom, or if he wishes to use you in the dark the way his mother has."

"What sort of worse trouble?" Ciel asks.

"I haven't the power to predict precisely what form it will take, but my experience with humankind and their scandals is hinting at the very real possibility of a rather unpleasant stench arising from this."

"What can we do about it?"

"By the time it breaks, short of silencing through threats or murder everyone who might know the least thing about it, there will be nothing we can do other than sit back and watch."

"I don't like the sound of that."

"We can always kill _everyone_ ," Sebastian proposes casually.

"I felt enough of a hypocrite standing there before Prince Edward recommending that he show public disapproval of Somerset's deeds. I'm not about to do anything _worse_ to silence anyone else concerning this affair."

"Did you feel like a hypocrite? Why?" Sebastian asks playfully from behind Ciel's chair, bending down to kiss the very corner of his mouth. "Because you let me do such things to you?"

"To say the least," Ciel mumbles, but with the trace of a smile on his lips. "Are you sure no one can see us? I'm not quite prepared to have to flee England the way Somerset has."

"No one can see us, except Carsten."

" _What?_ " Ciel gasps, nearly jumping out of his chair, except that Sebastian has his hands on his shoulders, keeping him in place.

"He's only passing through," his butler replies, nibbling his ear. "He has been watching us from the forest for four minutes thus far, and is leaving as we speak. He probably came by to see if we were all still alive. Perhaps he will return for a longer visit one day, but today is not that day."

"Why is he loitering in the forest instead of being 'Carsten Wolf', and squandering Ambrose's money for his amusement? Oh... but devils don't care about such things, do they? What is his real name, anyway?" Ciel asks, still trying to look around to see if he can spot Carsten, while Sebastian is intent on distracting him with kisses.

"I don't know. I didn't care to ask."

"For that matter, what is _yours_? You still haven't told me."

"It is not important. All I am, and all I want to be while you live, is Sebastian Michaelis."

Sebastian's evasive answer about his name is most unsatisfactory, but Ciel imagines he has a lifetime to find out. For now, he lets it go, because his demon has agreed that they can explore a little more, week by week, until his fourteenth birthday, when they may determine how much he is ready for. So he tilts his head right back to look up into his face, and asks: "What is it that Sebastian Michaelis wants to do with me tonight?"

"Wouldn't you like to find out?"

***

That night, Sebastian shocks, tickles and arouses him all at once by what – to the earl – is the highly novel act of licking his toes dry after his bath. Still wrapped in his towel, and laid on the bed like a soft, fluffy parcel, Ciel lies back to watch with fascination as he experiences the unusual pleasure of Sebastian cleaning over, under and between his toes with his tongue, like a cat bathing her kitten scrupulously. Each digit goes into Sebastian's mouth to be laved and teased, releasing butterflies in Ciel's tummy.

Another week, and Sebastian permits Ciel to touch him in any way he wants as he lies face down on the earl's bed. Given carte blanche, the boy does not know what to do. He strokes his demon's spine, examines his impossibly long legs, proves too hesitant to explore the older male's nether parts, presses kisses to the nape of his neck, and eventually straddles his prone body before lying on top of him like a puppy sprawled belly-down over a cushion and sighing into his shoulder: "I don't know enough. I really don't know what I'm supposed to do."

Another week, and he is drawing his tongue up the boy's inner thighs, leaving him heaving and panting with fear and excitement and bad memories, until he warms with his breath the smooth hollows where his legs join his body, plants the gentlest of single kisses on his delicate scrotum, then wraps him in his arms and holds him all night without venturing another advance.

Yet another week, and Ciel insists on trying his hand at undressing Sebastian all by himself and giving him a bath (very badly), which the devil puts an end to by grabbing the earl and pulling him into the bathwater with a messy splash. For the first time in years, Ciel laughs – not cynically, not hysterically – but with simple surprise and delight, before devouring his butler's kisses purely because kissing him gives him joy.

The morning after, the newspapers prove they have aimed their arrows higher, slinging their inky mud at none other than Prince Albert Victor, the delicately built eldest son of the Prince of Wales. They never say it outright, but strongly imply that he must have been a patron of the Cleveland Street brothel for the government to have exercised such leniency to those involved. Soon, newspapers as far away as America begin to expand on the rumours baselessly, and what Ciel warned the Prince of Wales about has come to pass.

Something he was not allowed to prevent has been done, and probably can never be undone. No doubt Prince Edward will summon him soon, either to be furious that he was right, or to be repentant about not taking his advice. All Ciel knows is that he is reminded ever more at this time that he is not free yet – not free of the throne's shadow, and not free to be open about how he and Sebastian are finding their way carefully with each other.

For now, he immerses himself in Sebastian, letting him hold him and shelter him from the pettiness of the world, its meaningless gossip and self-righteousness and moralising – just a bit longer, while they can still carve out a little peace for themselves.


	27. Gifts

"Happy birthday, Ciel!" Lizzie cries, thrusting a small, beautifully wrapped and ribboned present into her fiance's hands. She kisses him on the cheek.

Behind her, Lady Francis tries not to smile. It is on the tip of the marchioness' tongue to tell her daughter not to be so forward with her cousin. But she has been doing her best to be less strict with her younger child since the girl nearly died, and she is learning to let some things go. Especially minor matters such as Elizabeth's innocent affection for the boy who will after all be her husband in time to come.

"Thank you, Lizzie," Ciel says, chastely touching his lips to her cheek in return.

"Open it!" she says.

"Elizabeth," comes her mother's reminder. "You are not the only one who has brought Ciel a birthday present. Your father and brother have sent one, I have a gift for him, and I believe the members of his household have put together some things to mark this special day. Shouldn't we wait until Ciel is ready to open them too, and not only yours?"

"Oh! Of course, Mother!" Lizzie laughs. "I was simply too excited about finding a present that I was sure Ciel would like!"

"I am sure I will like your present best of all," he tells her graciously.

Elizabeth is brimming with delight that he has agreed to her suggestion of a simple birthday party with herself, her mother, his household, and any particular friends he may wish to invite. These past few years, Lizzie, her brother Edward, Lady Francis and the Marquess have marked Ciel's birthday with the greatest discretion, and without gifts – for he had made it very plain that the date was a painful reminder of how his whole world had been torn from him when he turned ten. But Lizzie has observed that in recent months, her cousin has been smiling more – in a truly contented way at that, not the pained smiles he forced for so long. He is starting to heal, and she wants to be there for him every day, every year, as he recovers fully and builds a family of his own, with her.

Sebastian receives the other gifts that the marchioness' footman takes down from the carriage, and carries them indoors behind his master and the guests. Lady Francis has recently met Prince Soma and his capable aide, so she greets the prince and acknowledges Agni when she steps into the withdrawing room where the small gathering is to be held. But a man is present whom she and Elizabeth have never seen before. They are surprised when he is introduced to them as John Jarvis, vicar of the Church of the Trinity in Lambeth.

"What a pleasure it is to meet you, Mister Jarvis," Lady Francis says. "I had no idea that my nephew was acquainted with any clergymen. He has never been... the religious sort."

"Lord Phantomhive seems to know many different kinds of people," Jarvis replies with a warm smile, hoping he will not be questioned in detail by this intimidating marchioness about _exactly_ how he came to know her nephew.

"Mister Jarvis was very kind to me when I encountered certain difficulties in the course of my work," Ciel tells his aunt.

"Lord Phantomhive neglects to say that he helped me out of a very difficult spot before that," Jarvis adds.

Lady Francis knows well what sort of "work" her father and brother did, and realises that she should perhaps not ask for too many specifics, especially not in front of everyone else. She therefore turns the conversation in a more mundane direction by asking the vicar: "How did you make your way here from Lambeth, Mister Jarvis?"

"His Lordship was kind enough to send his carriage for me..."

Ciel leaves them to exchange a few more pleasantries as Sebastian reminds everyone that it is to be a very informal party, and they should take what food and drink they want from the sideboard.

Armchairs, sofas, dining-table chairs and cushions have been positioned around the coffee table and carpet near the window with a pleasing view of the Christmas rose garden, so everyone gravitates there after filling their plates and glasses. The servants are initially embarrassed about sitting down with the marchioness, the prince, Lady Elizabeth and Lord Phantomhive, but Ciel growls at them that this is _his_ birthday party, and they are all his guests, and to please _sit_.

Sebastian does not take a chair or cushion, but half-perches against a sturdy, low cabinet behind Ciel. Now and again, he discreetly moves about, making sure that Lady Midford's coachman and footmen are well plied with food and wine in the kitchen, bringing more food into the withdrawing room, replacing empty bottles of wine with new ones, filling glasses, handing petit fours round, adjusting the curtains to let the crisp afternoon winter light in, and answering the telephone when it rings in the foyer.

"Sebastian, the cream-cheese and smoked salmon rolls with the chopped herbs are wonderful," Lady Francis offers some rare praise, when he is back in the room.

"Thank you, my lady. I am delighted that you like them."

"You must give my cook the recipe."

"Certainly, ma'am. I shall write it out at once."

"Not now," Lady Francis tells him. "This is my nephew's birthday celebration with his household, and you've not eaten a bite."

"I don't think I've ever seen Sebastian eat, although Agni has," Soma remarks. "I did try to make him sit down with us once when Ciel and I were having a makeshift picnic out in the garden with Agni – that was in summer – but he said something about how cooks never enjoy their own cooking as much as other people do."

" _I_ enjoy my own cooking," Baldroy protests.

"Yes, but no one else does," Finny returns with an innocent honesty, which is rewarded by a sharp cuff from the chef, provoking a loud cry of "Ow!" from him.

"That isn't entirely fair, Finny," Agni laughs. "Baldroy's cooking is very much improved. I really did like the roast duck he made for us last month, when Mister Jarvis was last here for lunch."

"Yes, the roast duck was excellent!" Jarvis confirms. "I've never tasted better."

"That was only because Mister Sebastian was looking over his shoulder every second... _ow_!" Finny goes again.

"Baldroy's cooking has improved," Sebastian admits. "I even trust him to make some of His Lordship's meals, on occasion."

"Don't make it sound as if I'm that difficult to feed," Ciel growls.

"Oh, _aren't_ you?" Soma demands. "You're the pickiest person to look after. 'Sebastian, this meringue isn't as crisp as the other one', 'Agni, the curry's much too hot', 'Baldroy, too much crust on the sandwiches', 'Sebastian, I don't care if it's the middle of _winter_ – I want a _fresh_ summer-berry trifle'."

Soma's wickedly accurate imitation of Ciel has everyone holding their sides with laughter; even Ciel permits himself a smile after scowling.

"All right, that's enough teasing," Elizabeth speaks up in her cousin's defence, although she herself has barely finished giggling. "It's Ciel's birthday. We can make fun of him another time. Now he should open his presents!"

"Oh yes, please, Young Master, do open your presents now!" Mey-Rin chirps. "I hope you will like what Baldroy, Finny and I have made for you."

"You made something for me?" Ciel asks. "What is it?"

"Here you go, Y'Lordship," Baldroy says, picking up one of the wrapped packages from the table and presenting it to Ciel. "Don't you worry – it won't explode in your hands."

Ciel slips off the string and paper to find a rectangular wooden box with brass hinges and a brass lock. It is a little roughly carved, but all the more appealingly rustic because of that, with a pretty picture of a bluebird painted on it.

"Finny chose the wood and design, I carved and polished it, and Mey-Rin painted it and put on the hinges and lock," Baldroy explains. "We've noticed that the box you've been keeping your pens in has a broken hinge, so we hope you will be able to use this."

"It's very charming, and the perfect size to hold my pens," Ciel says. "It will be put to use in my study from this day onwards. Thank you, Baldroy, Finny, Mey-Rin."

The next present is from Tanaka, a pair of the softest black kidskin gloves, "which I selected to be a little large, because I know Your Lordship will grow into them in no time at all", the steward expresses his wish for the earl's continued good health and physical development.

"Thank you, Tanaka. I do seem to be growing at quite a rate. These will fit just right once my current black kidskin pair starts wearing out."

Ciel finds that the next present handed to him is from Jarvis, and when unwrapped, proves to be a beautifully bound and illustrated book of Keats' poetry.

"I found it in a curio shop, and thought the illustrations were breathtaking. It seems to have been a privately bound copy from someone's personal library, and not from a commercial publisher."

"It's wonderful," Ciel says, admiring the gilt-edged leather tooling of the covers, and the exquisitely painted scenes of golden wheat fields, shaded bowers, violet-eyed ladies of ethereal loveliness, feathered creatures and Roman gods within. "How did you know that I love reading Keats?"

"A lucky guess?" Jarvis smiles, glancing at Sebastian, his secret informant.

Ciel is just as pleased – but for different reasons – with his next present, contained in a rather large box. It is from Soma and Agni, and when carefully opened on the carpet, turns out to be an exquisite Haviland tea set. It is identical to the one Soma smashed in a temper early this year, when he thought that Agni had betrayed him.

"I've owed you this tea set since last winter," Soma says sheepishly. "I hope this makes up for my stupidity that time."

"And for my causing my prince to be so upset as to behave impulsively," Agni adds.

"What is this about?" Aunt Francis asks.

"I... broke Lord Phantomhive's tea set last winter," Soma admits.

"It was a misunderstanding," Ciel tells his aunt. "But it was all cleared up very soon afterwards."

Sebastian's present is next, an attractive kaleidoscope in the shape of a spyglass, through which one may look in at one end to see endless crystal shapes and patterns forming as one rotates the other end.

"How marvellous!" Lizzie cries, when Ciel hands her the glass after looking through it himself. "The colours are _so_ pretty!"

Everyone has a look through the kaleidoscope, and oohs and ahhs over the changing, sparkling shades. Ciel gives Sebastian a discreet smile, which his butler returns, because this is only the devil's public birthday present for his young master. The private present was given this morning – an exquisite silver locket-pin whose central heart-shaped section, surrounded by stylised roses and leaves, opened to reveal a twist of Sebastian's demon hair braided together with strands of Ciel's hair.

" _I love it – I love it more than any other object you've ever given me," Ciel had said, kissing Sebastian. "Is this why you've been asking for days off these past months? To find this for me?"_

" _This is but the first birthday present I'm giving you today. The second will be at your party, and the third, tonight."_

Ciel's growing intimacy with his devil in the bedroom did not stop him from blushing then, as the words were spoken, or from colouring now, as he remembers the exchange. Fortunately, no one other than Agni gives him a curious look before Aunt Francis says: "Perhaps it is a coincidence, but the marquess and my son have sent a present that is shaped very much like Sebastian's gift."

She gives a handsomely wrapped parcel to Ciel, who opens it to find a gorgeously made spyglass of polished walnut wood and brass, through which he can look far into the distance and see things as if they were only a few feet in front of him.

"I shall write to thank the marquess and my cousin Edward for this gift, but please also convey my thanks to them once you are home, Aunt Francis."

"The marquess wanted to come with us today, but when he heard that the party would include your staff, he feared that his presence and Edward's would intimidate your household, as they have never met them before."

"I shall call on him and my cousin very soon," Ciel promises.

"Good. Now what do you make of my gift?" Lady Francis asks, handing him an object whose gift-wrapping cannot hide its shape or nature.

"A walking stick!" Ciel exclaims, tearing open the paper and getting to his feet to test its length and sturdiness. "An excellent choice, Aunt Francis. Thank you so much."

"Elizabeth told me that you were at least an inch and a half taller now than when you last purchased a walking stick, so I ordered a longer one."

"It's almost as if it was made to my measure," the earl says, going over to his aunt and giving her a peck on the cheek. He only used to kiss his Aunt An this way, but Aunt Francis has mellowed so much that he now feels he can approach her thus. It is the right move to make, judging from the glow of pleasure in her eyes.

"And _my_ present," Lizzie says, holding out the small box festooned with a blue ribbon, which she had earlier put into his hands by the carriage. "You said you would like mine best of all, and I hope you do!"

"A gift from one's betrothed is, by definition, always the best one," Soma chimes.

"But that shouldn't be the reason for Ciel's liking it best – I hope he really _does_ like it best," Lizzie sighs.

It is a gold fob watch, complete with a gold chain. It not only tells the time, but has an enamelled dial that makes a full rotation every twenty-eight days, so that its cut-away section reveals the phases of the moon painted on an enamelled celestial backdrop.

"It _is_ my favourite present out of all the presents before us here," he tells her honestly. "Thank you, Lizzie. I've never had a watch."

"Now Sebastian won't be only one in the house with a gold watch!" Finny cries.

"My humble butler's watch is but a simple timepiece," Sebastian declares. "Lady Elizabeth's gift is exquisite – a true work of art and impressive mechanical skill, more than fit for an Earl of Phantomhive to carry in his waistcoat pocket. While it would have been most proper for the lady's gift to be the last one opened at this party, I fear to say that there may be another present arriving as we speak."

Sebastian has the marquess' gift of the spyglass lifted to his eye purely for effect – Ciel knows he must have seen something in the distance with his own powerful demon's eyes well before this.

"What is it?" the earl asks.

"Carsten."

"Why is he here?" Ciel asks. Apart from that time when Sebastian told him Carsten had watched them from the forest for a few minutes, the other devil has not come by at all. His name, if not his face, is known to Scotland Yard as Percival Ambrose's associate; he remains wanted in England for the part he played in the Eastons' deaths. Although Ciel has told Randall that Ambrose is dead and buried, and Carsten was under Ambrose's control, Randall cannot make the police and immigration records go away. The earl had assumed that Carsten would either return to hell, or to Germany, where Ambrose has also left him property. The wealth there is all waiting to be claimed now that the London lawyer has sent a copy of the will to the German lawyers handling matters for Ambrose's estate in that country.

"I believe he comes bearing a gift," Sebastian answers.

"Oh?"

"I'm sure lots of people want to give you gifts, Ciel," Lizzie says with a brilliant smile, confident that hers is still the best. "Didn't the Prince of Wales send a present yesterday, and the queen a letter?"

"Yes."

The Prince of Wales had sent a handsome gold fountain pen, with a letter that imparted his birthday wishes in advance, adding closer to the end: _"You were perfectly right about that particular matter, and I ought to have listened."_

The queen also sent a letter with good wishes for her "dear boy", with no reference to any matters of politics, crime or gossip. However, Ciel knows from what Sebastian has secretly learnt, that the queen and the Prince of Wales have disagreed sharply about how to react to this scandal that has unjustly smeared "Eddy" – the royal family's private name for Prince Albert Victor. The Prince of Wales has in fact been tempted at last to ask the earl to make things "disappear", but the queen has refused, saying to her eldest son that "Eddy needs to learn a thing or two – his dissipated ways will not serve him well when he ascends to the throne after you – this will teach him to conduct himself properly in all arenas, so that no suspicion can attach to him in future."

Victoria has also indicated that she is considering giving Ciel greater power, and possibly raising his rank to that of marquess in a few years, so that he can serve her son and grandson with greater authority after her own reign ends.

"Won't that affect the balance Ambrose was talking about?" Ciel had asked Sebastian, when the devil shared his findings with him.

"Yes. But as I have promised, I will not let anything bad happen to you. I will take on the evil that would otherwise blight you, so the darkness and the powers of the universe will not harm you."

Ciel recalls all that in a swift blur as Carsten approaches the house, and Sebastian meets him at the door, then shows him into the drawing room.

"Lady Francis, you have not met Carsten Wolf, ward of Percival Ambrose."

Aunt Francis has heard about Ambrose and Carsten from Elizabeth, and nods to the "ward", as Soma makes a face at him.

"Lord Phantomhive," Carsten says formally, after nodding back to Lady Francis and ignoring Soma. "I wish you many happy returns of the day. I confess that the present I bring is not from me, but is from Mister Ambrose's estate. I believe he would have liked you to have this."

Ciel receives from him a red velvet drawstring bag, small enough to fit into the palm of his hand. When he opens it, he finds nestled inside a cast-gold brooch with a sapphire set in it, showing a nymph rising from a pool. The right half of the oval gold frame surrounding the sapphire pool is in the shape of the nymph's silhouette, while the left half of the frame's edge is formed from the sinuous curves and leaves of an ivy-like plant immortalised in the precious metal.

"It is not a new brooch. In fact, it is very old, something that Ambrose once told me he had purchased in Italy, long before he met me. It has been kept in a chest at his mansion in Potsdam for a very long time. But I hope it is to your liking."

"It is a flawless piece of jewellery. It belongs to you, however."

"Now it belongs to you."

"In that case, I thank you for it. Won't you join us?"

"I only came by to give this to you. I must be away now."

"I shall see you out," Sebastian offers. Ciel knows he intends to question Carsten about why he is here. For he cannot have come by purely to give a birthday present – the earl and the butler both know that much about this demon.

Carsten bows to the small party, and leaves the drawing room, then the manor, accompanied by Sebastian.

***

"Why are you here?" Sebastian asks the other devil in the forest.

"I am the one who should be asking you questions, _Sebastian_. What are _you_ doing? Do you think I haven't sensed your aura growing? Do you think _others_ haven't? I know you've read all of Ambrose's papers – you've concealed some of them from the child, haven't you? The ones that spell out exactly how to do what I think you are doing–"

"This is not your affair, _Carsten_. Ambrose told me precisely what needed to be done. I agreed that it was the only way. The child doesn't have to know until it is too late for him to do anything about it."

"You're a fool. If you think you'll get away with this..."

"I know I won't. The whole idea of it is that I _won't_ get away with it. You know that."

"From the moment that brothel scandal drew in the Prince of Wales' eldest son, and the royal family went about their internal bickering and machinations, the imbalance Ambrose was always ranting about began to grow. And at once I sensed it – I sensed _you_ ," Carsten snaps, stabbing a black-gloved finger in Sebastian's direction. "I'm telling you that others are taking note too. You'll hardly be able to deal with these others as easily as you did me."

"I know."

"Consider this a friendly warning from one devil to another. By the time the storm breaks, I'll be as far away from you as I can get."

"How kind of you to tell me even this much."

Carsten hisses in disgust and exasperation, and turns on his heel to go, snapping as he leaves: "I told you to leave that brat to die back in the shadow of the spell. It would have spared you a hell of a lot of trouble."

"And I told you that you would never understand. Although I thought you would comprehend something of it, after _that_." Sebastian points at the garnet ring that still hangs from its silver chain around Carsten's neck.

"Bloody fool," the other devil mutters, before springing into the air and disappearing into the distance.

Sebastian watches him till he can no longer see or sense him, then he returns to the house, where he finds that Ciel has slipped away from the party for a moment so he can meet him at the front door.

"What did he want?" Ciel whispers.

"Nothing that humans ought to know about – we merely had a sharp exchange about devilish frivolities. The things you really _should_ know about, now, I can teach you a little more of later tonight, after all your guests have gone home, and the others are asleep..."

He touches Ciel's cheek where it is heightened in colour, then they move apart quickly when they hear Lizzie's footsteps coming down the passageway that leads to the withdrawing room. They meet her before she can emerge into the foyer, and return with her to the party, where they are ready for the fabulous, five-tiered gateau that Sebastian has baked and covered with dark, glossy, icing and a garden's worth of chocolate roses for his young master's birthday.

***

"Did you really leave the manor so many times these past months just to find this locket for my birthday?" Ciel asks as Sebastian helps him unpin it from the inside of his waistcoat. The earl had insisted on wearing his butler's private gift all day, and Sebastian had had to persuade him to wear it under his clothes, so that Elizabeth would not notice it, insist on opening it, then ask whose lock of hair that was. "I thought that someone with your abilities would require no more than one outing to find a present for me."

"I won't lie to you – it was not always your birthday gift that drew me out of the manor," Sebastian admits as he removes Ciel's waistcoat and suspenders. "There were other reasons, which I do not wish to elaborate on at the moment. But I swear on all that is unholy that prostitutes clad in your jackets had _nothing_ to do with my excursions."

"They'd better not have," Ciel growls, as Sebastian slips off his blue ring and signet ring.

"Would you be jealous if I touched another intimately?" Sebastian asks, helping him out of his shorts.

"I wouldn't like it, but if you had to – like the time you took that nun to bed for information – I would accept it. I'm not as petty as _someone_ who turned green the moment Agni or Baldroy held me in their arms, you know."

"Indeed, you are _so_ much more rational and liberal-minded than I."

"Sarcasm becomes you too well," Ciel murmurs, reaching for Sebastian's tie and using it to pull the devil closer to him even as he begins unknotting the neckwear.

"I know. That's why I love to use it on you."

"Hmm. And what else are you going to use on me tonight?"

"My mouth, of course."

"And?"

"My hands."

" _And_?"

"And you're still too _small_ for that."

"Am I now?" Ciel asks, ready to demand more, only to be picked up by his demon, held straight up in the air, and assessed by him at arm's length.

"Oh yes, definitely too small," Sebastian says seriously.

Ciel clicks his tongue in annoyance and squirms in the devil's grasp. Sebastian laughs, and at last pulls him close. Ciel latches on to his butler and presses his mouth to his, seeking to merge with him in a way very different from how they would have had Sebastian devoured him.

"Impatient creature," the devil murmurs against the boy's lips as he lies down across the width of the bed and lets Ciel come to rest on top of him.

The boy doesn't rest long. His hands are soon busy, working at Sebastian's waistcoat and shirt buttons, and getting the fob watch chain out of the way. He is still not very good at it, for Sebastian rarely allows him to undress him. But a birthday is a good time to let him have his way, mostly.

His fingers are soon unfastening Sebastian's trousers and drawers, pulling them off his legs with some help from their wearer. The socks go off next, and Sebastian sits up to ease the unbuttoned shirt and waistcoat off his body before reaching over to remove the remainder of Ciel's clothing, for he is still in his shirt and drawers.

Sebastian then crawls on all fours towards and over him, forcing the earl to lie back on the bedcovers. He slips his arms under his body and lifts him so his head rests on the pillows, kissing him on the neck at the same time and drawing a moan of pleasure from him. He moves down to his right collarbone and has just left a perfect little love bite there when he feels Ciel's hand between his legs, encircling his still partially flaccid member and making it come to life.

"No," Sebastian says reluctantly as he feels the boy guiding him towards the tiny opening between his nether cheeks. "I told you that you're still too small."

"Then use my hand," Ciel whispers. "I want to feel a little of what it would be like to control you, just like this, with just one hand."

"Do you?" Sebastian asks, biting back a groan as his master strokes him firmly. He has never allowed Ciel to grasp him like this, and only once has Ciel been brought to completion by Sebastian's hand – their very first time together in the bathtub.

 _The boy learns well,_ Sebastian thinks, pushing one more slow, sensuous thrust into the earl's encircling fingers.

"Yes, I do. It's always you turning me into a quivering wreck. My turn now."

"Do you really think I would turn into a quivering wreck in the palm of your hand?" Sebastian asks. The question starts out rhetorical, teasing – for he retains a sense of superiority to this little human in so many ways. But as he gazes into those wide blue eyes that were once windows to a world of hurt, he sees that their blueness has turned to the colour of hope and life, and by the time he finishes asking the question, it is no longer rhetorical. Neither does he feel so superior any more as he says to Ciel: "Remove your hand from me for just a moment, and hold it in front of my face."

Ciel does as he is told. Sebastian licks the palm and fingers of that hand till they are coated with his saliva, then Ciel encircles his girth again with it, keeping his hand close enough to his groin that they both can believe the illusion that the devil is pushing deep into the boy's body.

"Hold me tighter," he whispers. He gasps softly as those delicate fingers close more firmly over him, and he thrusts hard into his hand, his head almost knocking against the bedhead, so much taller is he than Ciel.

He slips his arms under the earl's body again and drags him down, off the pillows, making it easier to arch his back so he can see the boy's face and look into his eyes as he moves in and out of that tight, saliva-slicked circle. Is he frightened? Is this too intense for him? No. He looks engaged, but calm, letting Sebastian set the momentum.

He begins to appear slightly overwhelmed only when Sebastian increases his pace after several minutes and bows his head to Ciel's to moan into his hair. But it is not beyond him to cope with it, and once he comes to grips with the devil's greater urgency, he even lifts his head to position his mouth as close to Sebastian's left ear as he can, to ask: "Wouldn't you like to _really_ do it?"

"Yes," Sebastian grunts. "But not _yet_."

"Say that first part again."

" _Yes_ , Young Master..."

Another violent thrust that Ciel's hand almost cannot contain, and Sebastian utters a soft cry as he comes. Ciel can feel it coming, for the hard member circled by his fingers seems for a second to become even stiffer, and suddenly, the devil's hot seed is spurting out over him, splattering onto his chest and abdomen, onto Sebastian's own body too. A final, dying throb in his hand, then Sebastian is pulling out, stretching out over him, putting a little weight on him, but not too much, smearing the dashes of semen over both their chests and bellies into one indistinguishable mess.

They lie there quietly for long moments, perfectly content with the other's proximity. Sebastian revels in the scent of the boy under him; Ciel's human senses still cannot detect any of Sebastian's scent, not even with his seed all over his skin, but he feels safe, sheltered by the powerful body covering him.

"You liked that?" Ciel asks at last, raising his left hand to stroke Sebastian's hair, which is both soft and stiff to the touch, like the feathers of a bird.

"Very much," Sebastian replies, lifting his head to look into Ciel's face again, and to kiss him.

"You've really made a mess, though," the earl smiles mischievously, staring down at their bodies.

"Hmm, I must do something about that," Sebastian answers, equally playfully, as he begins to lap up his spilt seed from his young master's chest, cleaning it all away with his tongue, and making Ciel shiver a little with the ticklishness of it.

Down the pale, slender body his tongue works, right down, until Ciel tenses as he reaches his lower belly. Sebastian draws back, reclines on Ciel's left side, and holds the boy's left hand with his right, while his own left hand gently traces a black fingernail down the length of the earl's half-erect penis.

"Do you trust me?" he asks, the question bringing to Ciel's mind what happened in his study months ago, when Sebastian had laid him down on his desk.

This time, Ciel does not panic, because everything has been slowly, gradually leading up to this. "I do," he answers.

"Do you truly want this?" Sebastian asks.

"Yes," he whispers. Despite his apprehension, he is increasingly aroused by the dark-nailed fingertip circling the head of his member, smearing the beads of his pre-ejaculate in a thin film over the smooth tip.

As he grows fully erect, the demon wraps his left hand around his length and strokes him slowly, lightly, for several minutes till he starts to strain for more pace and friction. Then Sebastian raises the pace as he lowers his head to take the very tip of the shaft into his mouth.

Ciel freezes for a second, swamped momentarily by the nightmares of Langton and the occultists hurting him – but Sebastian's right hand clasps his left tightly, and Ciel squeezes back as the nightmares recede. He sees only his devil before him, feels nothing but the wonderful warmth of Sebastian's mouth enveloping him, those sharp fangs carefully covered by his lips. He yields to the seduction of his tongue probing the tiny slit at the tip, the base of the smooth head, dragging sensuously along the looser skin below, then up to the tip again. At first Sebastian uses his mouth in tandem with his left hand, but soon, he shifts to crouch between Ciel's legs, and attends to him with his mouth alone – tongue, lips, palate all forming a hot, wet receptacle that brings the earl to the height of pleasure.

Ciel cries out as Sebastian grips his prick snugly between his tongue and the roof of his mouth, and pushes down hard. He tightens his grasp on the devil's hand further as he lets go of his terrors of the past, thrusts hard into Sebastian's mouth with abandon, and feels the tension scaling, engaging every part of his body and mind, hardly recognising the animal moans and whimpers that leave his throat as he rushes towards his peak.

One more firm downstroke of Sebastian's mouth, and Ciel arches his back and comes with a nearly despairing cry, like the moment the knife was driven into him on the altar, except that there is no pain, nor ugliness or horror, only desire and beauty and trust. His seed shoots into the back of Sebastian's mouth, and the devil swallows every spurt of it, cosseting Ciel with his mouth, keeping him secure, until he finishes.

At last, he slips out of Sebastian's mouth, panting heavily. He feels his demon sliding up his body till he is lying alongside him, still holding his left hand tightly. His free hand reaches over at the same time as Sebastian's arm goes over and around him, pulling him close, keeping him safe. And Ciel realises as he slips into a contented sleep that he feels no shame and no distress, only pure security in his devil's unwavering protection.


	28. Admission

"Mister Michaelis," John Jarvis greets with some surprise the visitor who stands on his doorstep in the middle of the day. He has not expected to see him again so soon, for it has been only two days since Ciel's birthday party.

"Mister Jarvis," Sebastian greets him in return, taking off his hat, and acknowledging the woman and her two small children who are just leaving the house, their hearts eased by the vicar's counsel, arms filled with bread, cheese and cured meat. The little family, awed by the tall, strikingly handsome, impeccably dressed man in the churchyard, drops curtseys to him before hurrying away.

"Please come in," Jarvis says, admitting him to the house. "That was Mrs Cole, and her daughters, Emma and Jane. Her husband drinks, I'm afraid, and beats her. Yet, while he is laid up with a broken leg, he cannot work, and she is even more distressed than when he is tormenting her with his fists. Only nine days to Christmas too. It is very hard."

"Life often is," Sebastian comments, picking up one of Jarvis' cats which has come up to greet him – a glossy black one with green eyes. He settles on the sofa with the bundle of fur in his lap, and strokes her smooth coat. "What is this beauty's name?" he asks the vicar, who is putting the tea kettle on.

"That is Simone. I needed a Simon the Zealot among my twelve, but she is a she, after all, so Simone it had to be. Very French, though. I believe Michaelis is a French or German name too, is it not?"

"Yes. I'll not go into how that came about, but I am no more French or German than you are."

"I don't doubt that," Jarvis chuckles, setting a plate of chicken biscuits before his guest. He knows Sebastian does not eat biscuits, but the devil likes feeding the cats, and the cats like these meat-flavoured bakes, so they serve a purpose.

"Aren't you going to ask what brings me here today?" Sebastian breaks a biscuit into thirds for Simone and two of her feline companions who are investigating him.

"I imagined you would tell me once you were ready."

"Ah, a man accustomed to visits from people who often do not know how to say why they are seeking your counsel," Sebastian smiles.

"You, however, are not the kind of person who has difficulty declaring what he wants," Jarvis returns.

"I am not. I can tell you at once that I have come here to ask a favour. Before that, though, I want to know if you believe that God spared Lord Phantomhive's life the night we came banging on your door."

"I do."

"So do I," Sebastian states frankly. "Belief, however, is not the same as faith or acceptance. If I had faith, I would perhaps have accepted that God did not spare him just to have him grow too fond of me. I would have left his side, protecting him while keeping my distance from him. But I wanted to be with him. I wanted to be close to him."

"You are important to that child. I do not think you were meant to stay away from him."

"It began as a simple contract," Sebastian reflects. "My services in exchange for his soul. But things happened. I made impulsive decisions. They led to other decisions, other changes. I no longer claim his soul. But it appears he is allowing me to claim... other things."

Jarvis sighs as he pats Tomkin the cat, who has jumped into his lap. "When the earl sought my advice over how to speak with the Prince of Wales concerning the Cleveland Street matters, I sensed he had a personal interest that went beyond the facts and politics of the case. Am I very far off the mark to say that what you allude to has some connection with that interest?"

"I suppose you do not approve."

"As a man of the church, I cannot approve. But as a friend, I will not judge."

"I still wonder how one such as you regards a creature like me, and an aristocrat of evil like the earl, as friends?"

"You tell me what you are. But what I know of you from your deeds is that you care for that child; I hear things of the Earl of Phantomhive, but what I see is a boy who protects those who cannot protect themselves, and needs love and friendship. Perhaps I am naive – people often tell me so – but I know what I see with my eyes, and what I feel with my heart."

"You _are_ naive in many ways. But I believe the goodness of your heart and soul protect you. You are a good man."

"I try to live in the way I believe to be right. But, Mister Michaelis, I am a deeply _flawed_ man. I often argue with God; I am sometimes upset with Him; I do not always obey Him; and I am occasionally impatient with my parishioners when they do not seem to want to help themselves."

"You _are_ a good man," Sebastian tells him. "Yours is not the harsh, sterile purity of angels, but a human goodness that is believable to mortals. You hold hope and love and faith in your heart, and give freely of that hope, love and faith, despite your struggles and temper and moments of doubt. That very flawed human goodness of yours is why I am here today."

"You said you wanted a favour? Don't put it that way. Tell me what it is I can help you with. I will see if I am able to help, and if it will be advisable for me to do so."

Sebastian takes an object out of his coat pocket, and shows it to Jarvis. It looks like a silver coin with a dark semi-circle on it, encased in a glass disc. On closer inspection, the dark semi-circle proves to be a tiny lock of hair. "The hair is Lord Phantomhive's," says the devil. "The coin has a spell cast on it – not a demonic spell – but one created by a human being, Percival Ambrose, the man you have heard spoken of at the Phantomhive manor."

"The guest of Lord Phantomhive's who died in April. The one whose demon I saw stalking the manor grounds each time I visited in spring."

"Yes. If Ambrose had been a Protestant, we would have asked you to attend him in his last days. I believe you would have been a kind influence on him. But he was Roman Catholic, so we found a priest to give him the last rites instead."

"What is this spell? I should state that as a man of the church, I do not care whether a magical procedure is demonic or human – so long as it is not of God, I do not normally choose to have anything to do with it. But as your friend, I must say that I am intrigued." Jarvis raises his eyebrows as he peers curiously at the coin.

Sebastian explains: "This spell he wrote out, and which I have for the first time tried to execute, points one in the direction of the person whose lock of hair is encased in the glass. It operates only if the person is in great danger and distress. I am asking you to keep this item with you, because if ever His Lordship should be in danger, and I am for some reason not there, or unable to help him, I would like to know that you may possibly assist him where I cannot."

"What do you think I could do to assist him in a situation where one of your abilities cannot?"

"You were the only one I could think of to help him on the night when my closeness to him was inadvertently harming him. And you did."

"Not I, but God."

"Either way, it was not I. Powers very different from mine brought him back from the brink of death that night. Your simple, flawed, human goodness was everything I lacked, and what he needed. Very soon, I may be... _bad_ for him, once again, and he may need other friends then. Will you be a friend to him in general, and of particular help to him if and when this spell directs you to him?"

Jarvis considers the coin in Sebastian's open hand for a while, then holds out his hand to receive it. "As I did that night when you came to me, I will do what I can."

"Thank you, Mister Jarvis. That is more than I could ask for."

***

Ciel has by now gone through most of the papers Percival Ambrose left behind. Sebastian has sorted them into various categories, including spells, letters, history, personal observations, philosophies, and a large pile marked "A little of everything", because it mixes the above categories and more into a journal-like record that spans many decades.

These papers hold vast stores of arcane knowledge. Ciel has been tempted to try out a few of the simpler spells, but has so far refrained because he has little interest in the world of magic. If he does not plan to go as deep as Ambrose, or even his own great-grandfather Charles did, then he will only ever dabble in it, and he does not like dabbling in serious things – he must either master them, or leave them alone.

From the box marked "Personal Observations", he picks up several sheets dated within the past year, and selects one written during Ambrose's first fortnight at the manor, when he was still clear-minded. Part of it contains his analysis of the world Ciel and Sebastian told him they had seen in the shadow of the spell:

 _That the reverse side of the spell took on the form of a vast forest, with a moon in the sky, is fascinating. I did not engineer the spell's un-worldly foundation to have any facade. It must have generated an appearance and nature from the consciousness of Ciel Phantomhive. That forest did not spring from my mind; Carsten's mind was under my control before he entered the un-world, so he cannot have been the source; Sebastian appears to have been stymied by that forest, so it is unlikely to have been a product of his consciousness. That leaves the child. He and his devil have reported that he was largely unconscious in the un-world, so if his mind was imposing itself on the reverse side of the spell, he would know nothing of it._

 _I am of the opinion that for so young a child to have such powerful ability as to turn an_ entire _un-world into a vast forest, complete with a false moon, suggests he has innate esoteric talents. What little I can wring from him and his devil about their initial encounter and contract indicates that their association sprang from an accidental summoning._ Accidental _– by a child no more than ten years of age at the time. This is most interesting. The Phantomhives have nurtured some unusual skills over the generations, forced to adapt to the position imposed on them by the crowned heads of England through the years. The significance of Ciel Phantomhive's position and abilities may be only beginning to emerge._

 _What the moonlit-forest scene of the un-world signified, I do not know. But as the child had just sacrificed himself for his demon, I wonder if forests and moonlight had some connection to his perception of the demon by his side. The image is vaguely romantic, but also dark and dense, possibly frightening. Only the child himself is likely to arrive at a probable conclusion about it, in the years to come._

Ciel puts the papers down and thinks about the day his relationship with Sebastian changed dramatically. He does not know what the forest and moon signified any more than Ambrose did. But he knows that nothing has been the same since Sebastian cradled him in his arms and did all in his power to save him. He has never obtained a full account of what transpired in that nowhere-world – Sebastian is reluctant to go into detail – but he remembers what he heard and felt, which is more than enough.

That sense of closeness to Sebastian, however, is one thing; his knowledge that Sebastian has not been entirely open with him is another. He rises, puts the papers away, and walks out of his study for the third time that afternoon since the devil left the manor, to see if the way is clear for him to go downstairs unobserved by the servants.

***

Sebastian leaves John Jarvis' house, but does not return to the manor at once. Instead, he moves unseen through London. He uses every one of his unnatural senses to track the possible presence of a certain individual, waiting until he picks up on that being's aura.

A rapid determining of the precise location, a swift flight to that spot, and in seconds, he is standing behind the gangly, outlandish figure of Grelle Sutcliff, inside a shabby house where a warring husband and wife have just breathed their last – he having stabbed her eleven times in the chest and womb, then driven the blade into his own heart.

Grelle does not appear to notice him, busy as he is severing the cinematic record of the woman's life while keeping his own abundant scarlet hair out of the way of his unorthodox scythe. But it becomes apparent that he was only acting unaware, for he glides with impressive speed from slicing through the record to very nearly slicing through Sebastian's midriff in one long, clean stroke.

The devil, however, is as canny as the soul reaper, and has seen the attack coming early enough to avoid it, leaping backwards across the room to land lightly on his feet in front of the far wall.

"Ahhhh, _Sebas-chan_ ," Grelle exhales breathily, splitting his face from ear to ear in an exceptionally unbecoming grin that displays every one of his sharp teeth dovetailing in a vicious scissor-bite. "How _naughty_ of you to sneak up on me like that!"

 _Sebas-chan._

A deliberately Japanese play on his European name, turning it in one double-edged stroke into both an alternative articulation of it, and into a diminutive version that more or less means "Sebastian dear".

Not for the first time, it occurs to the devil that unlike demons, soul reapers transcend cultures and time. Devils know different human cultures because they have existed long enough to watch them develop. Soul reapers, however, seem not to draw on their longevity for knowledge, but to tap into a mysterious source that lets them span human experience, and reach into the future. The mechanised scythe Grelle wields – like the unorthodox scythe of Ronald Knox – looks to Sebastian well within the possible realm of human invention, only not now, not yet. Perhaps in a few decades.

Somehow, soul reapers – _Shinigami_ , to spin off Grelle's dabbling in Japanese touches – can take hold of these future inventions and employ their shapes and functions in their spiritual tools.

"Ooooh, _Sebas-chan_ , are you struck mute by my stunning beauty?" Grelle asks, laying the seductiveness on thick, ogling, pouting and posing all at once.

"Quite the reverse," Sebastian replies dryly. "I could find no words in any language known to me that were sufficiently offensive to express the disgust I felt at sight of you, hence my silence."

"What poetic speech you woo me with!" Grelle cries, springing towards Sebastian with such swiftness that the blade of his scythe, rotating and vibrating at dangerous frequency, comes within a fraction of an inch of the demon's cheek.

The devil sweeps a long leg out as he ducks elegantly, catching Grelle in the backs of the knees as he shoots past him, sending him stumbling across the room.

"O-ho, playing hard to get, are we?" shrieks the Shinigami, through a messy veil of red locks that he tosses off his pale face once he recovers his balance. "Do you like it rough, _Sebby_?"

Grelle's high-heeled, high-vamped, laced-up brogues kick at Sebastian's jaw in an attack that the devil just manages to drive back with the palms of his gloved hands – a hard blow that would have shattered Grelle's ankles had he been human, but as it is, only sends him crashing through the bedroom wall into the kitchen.

Grelle's green eyes narrow. He rights himself and readjusts his grip on his scythe as Sebastian glides lightning-fast into the kitchen after him. "You're faster and stronger than I remember, Sebby _-chan_. Bad boy – what _have_ you been doing?"

"I might ask the same," Sebastian states coldly. "My young master has not been inclined to pursue the matter, but I have decided that I will not let it go."

"Oh, _'pursue'_?" Grelle echoes suggestively, with a disturbingly sweet smile. "Is this the beginning of a beautiful courtship, my tall, dark, tainted hero?"

"When Sophia Easton sought the counsel of practitioners of magic against the Phantomhive manor, you posed as one such practitioner. You did that to impart to her information contained in my master's premature cinematic records that are stored in the soul reapers' library. Did you imagine I would let you get away with teaching his enemies how best they could hurt him?"

Sebastian scoops up in one smooth move a quintet of knives from the kitchen table of the dead couple, and flings them with deadly accuracy at Grelle, pinning him to the back wall by his coat and sleeves, and letting the fifth knife catch him by the hair at the very top of his head. Its blade nicks Grelle's scalp to release a rivulet of blood which flows down the soul reaper's brow and nose.

"How _dare_ you ruin my beautiful tresses and mar my flawless face?" Grelle screams, only to look pleased the very next second as a different thought strikes him. "Ahhhh... but this rough wooing of yours may be said at last to have penetrated my _maidenhead_ with your masculine blade, and here is the blood which proves that long-awaited consummation... except you forget that I too have a very _large_ blade!"

With that, Grelle wrenches his right coat-sleeve free of the knives pinning it to the wall, and throws his scythe in a dangerous arc that whirls past Sebastian, slicing through a lock of his raven-black hair before nestling back into the shinigami's hand.

"Slippery, _slippery_ sweetheart!" Grelle cries. "Next time I swing this at you, I'm aiming for hairs on _other_ parts of your delicious body!"

"Then it is just as well that you won't be swinging it again," Sebastian snarls, soaring into the air with a sextet of forks and unleashing them to stab their tines into the soul reaper, in a neat line from throat to belly. As Grelle registers the unwelcome and painful penetration by the blunt tines – grubby with stale food, at that – the devil plunges downward and kicks the scythe out of his hand with the heel of his left shoe. In the same move, he forces the forks further into Grelle's body, right into the wall, impaling him on them.

The soul reaper shrieks, but continues to leer at Sebastian through his pain. "Sebas-chan – how _hard_ you thrust into me..."

"If it were not for my master's lack of interest in seeking revenge on you for the Easton affair, I would pick up that scythe now and separate your head from your shoulders," the devil declares icily. "As it is, I will leave it at this. But if you attempt to harm the child one more time, directly or remotely, I will end your existence with no apologies."

One last shove of the bottom-most fork through Grelle's belly, and Sebastian turns and walks away.

" _Sebas-chan_ ," Grelle hisses at the erect, black-clad butler's back. "You should be looking at who _authorised_ me to release information that would _weaken_ the brat."

Sebastian keeps walking.

"Oh-ho-ho!" Grelle laughs as the revelation hits him. "You already _know_ that I was _permitted_ to act, don't you? And you know perfectly well what you're doing to yourself! Ah, my sweet Sebastian – we may enjoy a further consummation yet, with torn flesh and much blood. _Because you're not going to get away with what you're doing!_ "

***

Ciel checks that Soma is napping, Tanaka is having his tea, Baldroy, Agni and Mey-Rin are engaged in the kitchen, and Finny is outdoors, before he slips below stairs and makes his way along the corridors towards Sebastian's bedroom.

He is no fool. He knows Sebastian has been hiding things from him. His frank refusal to explain his regular absences from the manor, and evasiveness about what Carsten wanted on Ciel's birthday, clearly say that he is keeping something from him. Ciel supposes he ought to be grateful that Sebastian does not lie, and has not thought up some believable excuse as a cover. But the fact remains that he is not telling him things, and Ciel does not like to be kept in the dark.

He shuts the door behind him and begins to search the room, opening Sebastian's desk drawers and wardrobe, checking under the bed and the mattress, climbing onto a chair to feel along the tops of the furniture. He does not know what he is looking for, but has an idea that it might be something out of place, whose significance will occur to him only when he sees it.

He begins with grim determination, and a spark of ruthlessness, steeling himself for whatever he may find. But as the minutes tick by, as told by the pocket watch Lizzie gave him, Ciel discovers nothing of interest. In fact, what begins to occur strongly to him as he goes through Sebastian's belongings is that nothing he has found here has any sort of significance at all.

Sebastian has virtually no personal possessions. The garments in the wardrobe are all items belonging to the manor – his butler's clothing, and other finely made but generally anonymous articles that come in useful when he and Ciel are working on underworld cases. The only truly personal item folded on one of the shelves is not even from Ciel, but from Lizzie – the black scarf she gave him after he saved her from death in that crate buried under the earth.

The items on his dresser are for show. Ciel knows his devil does not need to shave, or clean his teeth, or trim his nails. Perhaps he combs his hair, but that is all. Everything else on and in his body apparently puts itself in order, given enough time.

The papers and books on his desk relate to household accounts, tradesmen's bills, grocery lists, and the daily menus. No personal letters, no diaries, not even a novel or collection of poetry. All the blank sheets of note paper are marked with the Phantomhive crest, used for business purposes.

His chest of drawers is empty of everything besides his spare butler's white shirts, fronts, ties, vests, pins and underthings, common household items like boxes of candles (again, only for show – his eyes need no light in the dark), leather waxes and oils, polishing cloths, unopened boxes of matches, spare lamp glasses, string, and bed linen.

His bedside table holds an alarm clock and a lamp, both from the manor.

Ciel experiences a sobering sense of unease as it sinks in how little of Sebastian is in this room. It is as if he were merely passing through, a guest at an inn who will pack up in the morning and leave. If one is to judge purely by this room, then he does not seem at all attached to this place, bound as he is to it by nothing except Ciel himself. Nothing here – except...

Something catches Ciel's eye amidst the matches, half-used candle, buttons, needles, thread and gauze in the bottom drawer of the chest, the second time he opens it for another look. It is so small that he missed it the first time amongst the buttons it mingles with. A spent bullet. Ciel instinctively knows as he picks it up that it is the one he shot Sebastian with the day they hunted down Susan Rothstein, or Susan Eliot, or whatever name she went by. A reminder of that period of resentment and distrust. Why would Sebastian keep this, of all things? Does he hold that lack of trust against Ciel?

He does not know, but he is out of time. Whenever Sebastian leaves the manor alone, it is never for more than an hour or two. Already, an hour and a half have passed since the devil stepped out. With his keen sense of smell, he will know at once that Ciel has been in here. There is no point in attempting to hide it. So Ciel does the only sensible thing he can do – he kicks off his shoes, spreads out the cat-hair-free blanket over Sebastian's bed, and curls up on top of it for an afternoon nap, clutching the bullet in his hand.

***

The instant Sebastian steps into the manor, he knows where Ciel is. He wonders if his return will take him by surprise, or if he will find the boy defiant, afraid, or furious. He does not expect, however, as he pushes his bedroom door open, to find him fast asleep, curled up in the middle of his bed like a rather large cat. The loosely closed fingers of his upturned right hand cover the bullet Sebastian has been keeping in the chest of drawers.

The devil shuts the bedroom door behind him and locks it. He removes his leather gloves, touches his fingertips to Ciel's soft, black hair, and smiles. Of course the child would not hide, or clumsily conceal his actions; he would make perfectly plain his presence here, and his searching of the room. He is not feigning sleep either, but has truly dropped off.

Sebastian bends down and wakes him with a kiss. The boy stirs and languorously turns onto his back to gaze up out of one sleepy blue eye, a tiny speck of dirt in the inner corner. The demon cleans the speck away and slips off the patch to check the other eye.

"There's blood on your coat," Ciel murmurs.

Shinigami blood.

"There's a bullet in your hand," Sebastian replies calmly, stripping off his soiled coat and dropping it to the floor.

"Turned your room inside out looking for it," Ciel says, shifting to accommodate Sebastian on this bed, which is much smaller than his own.

"Why were you looking for it?"

"Not for it specifically, but for something that was yours, rather than the manor's. There's nothing of you in this room."

"Physical possessions mean little to me."

"Why did you keep the bullet?"

"It was something of yours that pierced my flesh and drew blood from me. It seemed significant," Sebastian says, taking the bullet from Ciel and putting it on the nightstand.

"I'm sorry I shot you."

"I'm not," the butler answers, unbuttoning Ciel's shirt.

"What are you hiding from me?"

"You will find out in time," he tells him, unfastening his shorts.

"You're not even bothering to hide the fact that you're hiding something."

"Why would I? You are too keen-minded to be deceived by such concealment." Off with the small drawers.

"But you won't tell me what it is," Ciel perseveres, while Sebastian peels off the last scrap of clothing on his body, leaving him in his stockings.

"What amusement would there be in telling you?"

"I didn't know this was meant to be amusing."

"It wasn't. But if some entertainment may be derived from it, why not be entertained?"

"Are we about to do something entertaining now?"

"Of course we are. When a demon returns to his bedroom to find a delectable morsel curled up in his bed, isn't that morsel fair game?"

"It won't be for long if you keep referring to it as a morsel," Ciel growls, even as Sebastian pulls him into his lap. He catches his breath when the devil positions him so that he is straddling his thighs, just like the time he was sick and Sebastian was holding him like this to massage his neck. Except that while Sebastian is still clothed, Ciel is wearing nothing but his silk stockings. "You like having me in your lap, don't you?" he asks softly.

"I like having you everywhere."

Ciel blushes, but retains enough presence of mind to remind him: "Not that you've _had_ me yet."

"It is too early for that. It will hurt you."

"So you say."

In response, Sebastian holds up his right hand before Ciel's face. As the boy looks questioningly at him, he gently inserts his middle finger into his mouth. "Lick," he tells him.

Ciel reddens a little more, remembering how he had made Sebastian clean his hand that time. _Fair enough_ , he thinks, as he obeys his devil, sucking and licking the long, elegant finger, attending to every inch of it. It occurs to him to wonder if Sebastian will ever allow him to do this to his cock, and another thought crosses his mind concerning how he will ever get it to fit into his mouth – and abruptly, all thoughts flee as Sebastian withdraws his finger and slips it between his buttocks until he is pressing it against the opening to the tiny hole in his behind.

"It is too early for that, and this is why," Sebastian whispers, as he slides the very tip of the spit-covered finger inside Ciel.

Ciel gasps and grips Sebastian's shoulders with his hands. He doesn't know if he wants to run to the toilet, or if he wants to stay.

"Shall we stop here?" the devil asks.

"No," Ciel insists, although the physical sensations are strange and uncomfortable.

He pushes in another half-inch, and Ciel inhales sharply.

"Does it hurt?" Sebastian questions.

"A little."

"That's just _one_ finger. And you are very small and _snug_ , so it is much too early. Besides, mortals are not very resilient. Human males who are taken by other males in the rear too regularly, over too long a period of time, often end up incontinent after some years. That would not be a very dignified condition to live with, would it? Even when you grow old enough to be taken by me, or by any other lover, do it sparingly. Do not damage your body permanently when so much pleasure can be had in so many other ways."

"I didn't know a lesson on human biology was scheduled for today," Ciel remarks, trying not to squirm as Sebastian's finger moves in another half-inch. "Are you sure your finger isn't damaging me?"

"You can quite safely allow your lovers to carefully put one finger into you, or perhaps two, over the long term without permanent harm."

"Why are you bringing up other lovers? I don't want others. Only you."

"You may tire of me some day. Even if you don't, you will marry. And you may, like so many English aristocrats, keep mistresses, or a boy or two. Women must be made love to differently – I will teach you about them by and by – but if your taste falls to men, you should know what is and is not safe to do over many years."

"I won't tire of you," Ciel declares angrily, fighting at the same time against the discomforting sensations of having a finger up his arse.

"If so, we have nothing to worry about," Sebastian says with a smile, kissing him, then doing something with his finger that almost makes Ciel cry out – not with pain, but with pleasure, so intense does it feel.

"Se- _bastian_ ," he gasps, pressing his face into the demon's chest.

"Do you like that?" the butler asks.

"Y-yes..."

"My hand is actually at the wrong angle for this," Sebastian whispers. "You are so tender, and so delicate, I shouldn't be using my fingernail at all. Here – let us see if this is better."

He lies back on the bed, pulling Ciel along with him, positioning him higher on his body. He withdraws his finger from the boy for a moment to slip his hand under Ciel's right thigh before penetrating him again, approaching more from the front this time.

"That should be better," he says softly, the soft pad of his fingertip very gently stroking a spot some two inches in that gives Ciel the most arousing sensations, making him cry out.

"Shhh," Sebastian goes, his left hand moving up along Ciel's spine to cradle the back of the boy's head. "You're going to have to be very quiet now, because Baldroy is coming down the passageway."

Ciel starts to panic, but Sebastian's finger is applying the sweetest pressure inside him, and he turns his face into his butler's shoulder to muffle his cries, biting down on the fabric of his cotton shirt.

A knock soon comes at the door, followed by Baldroy's voice: "Mister Sebastian, are you in there?"

Ciel wants to scream with the pleasure of what Sebastian is continuing to do to him, but he stifles his gasps and pants, sinking his teeth into his devil's shoulder. The handle of the door turns, but as it is locked, the door does not open, and Baldroy goes away again, evidently thinking that Sebastian must have locked the door with his key before leaving the manor.

"There you are, all clear now," Sebastian whispers, turning Ciel onto his back and hovering over him, but continuing to work him with his finger even as he dips his head and takes the boy's by-now fully erect cock into his mouth, pleasuring him outside and in until Ciel twists his neck and shoulders so he can turn his face into the blanket to cry out as he climaxes violently, bucking and straining.

Sebastian swallows his young master's seed, extracts his finger carefully, and lies beside him, stroking his flushed face and damp hair with his clean left hand, keeping the right safely away from the boy.

"Now, Young Master, would you say that you found what you came looking for?"

"No," Ciel pants. "But it's possible that I found something better."

"Was that a compliment of my technique?"

"Maybe... so what _else_ are you hiding from me?"

"Wouldn't you like to find out?"


	29. Watching

Henry Ridley, whose underground operation specialises in the smuggling of contraband goods, drugs and people, feels both optimistic and afraid tonight as his men unload a new type of opiate from the Indian subcontinent. The legitimate workers at the storehouse holding cargo from the freshly docked ships have been bribed to be absent from their posts for a while. This entire area is empty of everyone who would normally be there, allowing Ridley's people to swiftly remove what they need from amongst the crates of otherwise innocuous fabric goods.

He feels optimistic because his competition in the London underworld is dwindling. Lau, who supervised a sprawling kingdom from his network of opium dens, is rumoured to have died after turning against the Earl of Phantomhive, and failing to topple him. The Easton group has been shattered since their bosses were stupid enough to anger the royal family – but then the Easton gang's areas of interest never overlapped much with Lau's. It is really Lau's absence that has left a void in the world of drugs and illegal goods. Other gangs that tried to muscle in on the vacated turf made headway along with his own, but one by one, they have fallen away. Just last month, Paulie Woodcock and his people vanished, leaving behind only a blood-soaked smuggling den.

Ridley feels afraid, because he does not know what happened to the others with whom he used to scrap for Lau's crumbs in petty territorial warfare. It cannot be the Phantomhive boy; he has been lying low, and has scarcely shown his one-eyed face in the more unsavoury parts of London for months. Neither have any of his paid runners and informants been scurrying about poking their noses into anyone's business.

Something else is going on, and Henry Ridley has no idea what it is. He only knows he might be in a position now – especially with this large shipment of new drugs – to wrest enough position and power to challenge the Earl of Phantomhive. He will do a hell of a lot better than Lau (what would a _Chinaman_ know about the underbelly of England?), and Sophia Easton (what would a _woman_ know about anything?). Once in position, he will face the Aristocrat of Evil himself across his bloody fine chessboard and knock all his ridiculous pawns and knights off it. Then he, Henry Ridley, will rule the underworld and scoff at the impotence of Scotland Yard while running circles around them.

"Get those boxes loaded into the carriages, and get out of here – we haven't got all night," Ridley growls at his right-hand man, Jim, from his shiny new brougham.

The police might stop and search carts, but a group of fine carriages drawn by handsome horses will not be obvious targets for those who stupidly attempt to maintain law and order in the open – when everyone knows that real power is grasped in the dark.

"We're just about done," Jim observes. "The guards aren't back yet, anyway."

"That's odd," Ridley frowns. "They're always back before we're ready, hurrying us out of here."

"Well, I don't see 'em–"

Jim's words are cut off as he crumples to the ground, blood gushing from a ghastly wound that Ridley suddenly sees splitting him open from face to hip, by the light of the lamp on his carriage. A dark shadow flashes past.

Ridley pulls a pistol from his belt and points it this way and that out of the carriage window, but he no longer sees the shadow, so he yells at his coachman to drive away. There is no answer from the man, so he cautiously leaves the carriage at last, stumbling over Jim's corpse. The coachman is slumped dead over the box seat, and the men who had been working to load the other carriages only a moment ago are all slain, wide-eyed with terror in death, their bodies ripped open.

He starts to panic. This must be what happened to the other gangs who vanished in recent months. His gun hand begins to shake. A shadow glides by at his back, and he whips around, firing off a round with a horribly loud report, only to put a hole in the polished wood trim of his own carriage. No one is there that he can see, but _someone_ did this to Jim and the others...

"Good evening, Mister Ridley," comes a silky voice behind him.

He jumps and swings his gun wildly at the tall figure clad entirely in black who has appeared out of nowhere. In the light of the lamps from the carriages, and on the crates in the storehouse, the man's figure and face look familiar. In another moment, he places him.

"I know you! You're the Phantomhive boy's butler. So all this is _his_ doing?"

"Oh dear, no, the Earl of Phantomhive doesn't know a thing about this," the man replies smoothly.

"Th-then why are you doing this?"

"Do you really want to know?" the butler asks, taking a step towards him.

"Stay where you are!" Ridley roars, firing the next round of his pistol at the other's left knee. The bullet strikes the knee – he is sure it does – but the man keeps walking as if nothing more than a pebble had bounced off his leg. Ridley fires again, and again, at the closest range imaginable, without the least effect on his adversary.

"My turn now," purrs the butler as the pistol in his face clicks emptily.

The tall figure moves his right arm in a swift stroke that Ridley does not even see, and suddenly, he is on the ground, clutching his useless gun, lying in a heap, his mind not comprehending why he is down here and not on his feet.

"Why are you doing this?" he screams, as sharp pains begin shooting up from somewhere in the region of his legs to the rest of his body.

"Because if I don't, you will engage in a struggle for power against the Earl of Phantomhive. If he is not to let it pass, he will be obliged to destroy you. I don't want him to have to do that."

"So you _are_ doing this on his orders!" Ridley bellows, wanting to howl from the agony of whatever is broken and torn in his body. He can't see where the wound is... can't feel where...

"No, not on his orders. Only on my own. Only in my name. And I will kill you in my name alone."

"Y-y-you've already destroyed me!" Ridley shrieks, tears of naked fear pouring down his face. "You've killed all my men! I have nothing now – I'll never hurt the earl again – you don't have to kill me!"

"I'm afraid I do, Mister Ridley," the devil smiles coldly. "I must and will kill you in my name, so that the power that would have been yours will now accrue to me."

"Power?" Ridley cries, desperately trying to crawl away but finding that his legs will not move. "What are you talking about?"

"Less than a year ago, I too would not have known what this was about, but I have read some interesting papers about a spell cast by someone, or a few someones, in the court of King James I. It was created to bind the power of Phantomhive, the powers of the underworld, and several other powers that do not concern you specifically, to an invisible weighing scale. When the underworld loses power, the scales tip and the Phantomhives gain it, often to their detriment. The spell cannot be destroyed without harming Phantomhive, but I have found a way to divert the power that would otherwise go from one party to the other, to myself. Diverting the spell requires the deaths of those in the underworld like you, who would seek to challenge the Earl of Phantomhive. It requires your death to be at my hands, in my name. It's all about magic."

"Magic? What magic? A-and... y-you're doing this for _yourself_? F-for g-greater _power_?" Ridley stutters hysterically. He wets himself as the devil moves closer to him, till his glowing red eyes are no more than two inches from his.

"It is of no consequence to you why I am doing it. But know, as you die, that you have served a greater purpose. Goodnight, Mister Ridley."

Ridley's chest bursts open as the demon thrusts his hand through it, shattering his heart and lungs, accompanying the final dispatch with words of magic that suck in the power of the underworld that would have fallen to the man who is nothing now but a heap of broken flesh and bones on the ground.

Ridley is no longer alive to see the devil lick the blood off his hand with satisfaction. He no longer has eyes to see that with his growing strength, the demon only needs a sweep of his arm to pulverise the bodies scattered about him, till the carriages and horses are the only things outside the storehouse standing on this ground that runs streams of blood toward the river.

But other powers notice, and other powers see, as the cosmic scale does not shift a fraction in either of its usual directions, but as it has in recent months, once more tips to shift the elements passing over it into the burgeoning force contained in the single person of the devil who goes by the name of Sebastian Michaelis.

They notice. They watch. They wait.

***

For a moment, Lizzie does not know what to say after hearing what Ciel has to tell her. But that moment is all she needs for the message to sink in, and in the next second, she is throwing her arms around him, crying out: "Oh, Ciel! Is it really true? That your eye might heal?"

Tears of joy are already spilling from her own bright green eyes, because it seems that all the pain her fiancé endured four years ago is starting to heal, both emotionally and physically.

Ciel feels a twinge of guilt that he is deceiving Elizabeth to an extent, because like everyone else, she thinks that he either lost his right eye, or had it so badly disfigured that it is too hideous to be seen, when his parents were murdered and he was kidnapped. She also does not know that this matter of "consulting a surgeon" is merely a means for him to eventually remove his eye patch without making the sudden "recovery" of the eye seem improbable.

He and Sebastian have agreed that it would not serve much purpose to keep his eye covered when the mark of their covenant has all but disappeared. His right iris has only the faintest of magenta traces left in it; that will be easily explained away in future as slight discoloration and damage remaining from the injuries he sustained at the age of ten. Lizzie knows none of that, and he feels he is somehow cheating her of the joy she is so freely giving him.

"Yes," he mumbles awkwardly. "I've seen a surgeon in Harley Street, and there is a chance that some of the clouding that has marred the eye can be reduced, or perhaps removed. There are new medical drugs..."

"I'm so happy for you, Ciel!" Lizzie cries. "So, _so_ very happy. I want you to always be well, and full of joy, and delighted with life. I only want all that is good and bright and... and _perfect_ for you!"

"I know," he replies, touched by how she genuinely wants nothing to blight his life. "Thank you for caring so much for me."

"Of course I care for you!" she exclaims, hastily wiping her tears away with her sleeve and smiling at him through their glistening traces on her lashes and cheeks. "Who else would I care for if not you?"

She blushes, realising she is being a little forward with her speech. They are engaged to be married, but that was only an agreement between their parents – it is not as if it is a binding contract under the law. So she should not presume that he will ever actually _ask_ her. She sobers further as she realises that he will probably never _have_ to ask – the reality is that one day, when they think she is old enough, her father and mother will simply say to Ciel and herself that it is time, and they will proceed with a wedding as if it were an appointment for tea...

"Where is Sebastian?" she asks quickly, to turn the topic of conversation away from the awkward matter of what she and Ciel are to each other. Asking about the butler's whereabouts is not as odd a thing to do as it might seem, considering how he is _always_ there to open her carriage door whenever she visits, if he and his master are at home. He is nowhere to be seen this morning.

"Oh, I told him to leave me to greet you," Ciel mutters, a little sourly. "He's seeing to elevenses."

He is slightly disgruntled with Sebastian, because the demon came home at an obscene hour of the night... no, it was the early hours of the morning by then, his gloves and right sleeve covered in blood. Ciel had waited up for him, but he had flatly refused to explain what he had been doing, or who or what he had just killed, even when they retired to Ciel's bedroom.

" _Sebastian, you have to tell me what the hell you're doing!"_ Ciel had raised his voice as much as he reasonably could without waking Soma, whose room was at the other end of the wing.

" _No, Young Master. I will not do that,"_ had been the plain reply.

" _Are you feeding to sate your hunger? If that's it, I will understand..."_

" _I have not been feeding tonight. Not much."_

" _Damn you! What are you playing at?"_

" _Nothing you ought to know about."_

There had been no intimacies after that, with Ciel angry and Sebastian obdurate. Dressing and grooming at sunrise were done in silence. The chill thawed a little at breakfast, with Sebastian making quiet overtures and Ciel willing to let go of some of his frustration. But it is not back to normal just yet.

The earl takes his fiancée into the morning room, where they start by playing draughts, but end up poring over the newspaper instead. Lizzie is fascinated by what she reads. Most women and girls in respectable families are not allowed to read the newspapers, for their husbands and fathers consider serious or scandalous reports unfit for their eyes. Some are permitted to read parts of the newspaper only after their menfolk have removed the pages they do not want them to see. Lizzie's father, having been "trained" by his terrifyingly competent, exceedingly well-read marchioness, is not foolish enough to try to keep the newspaper they subscribe to from her or any of his female relatives. But Lizzie is still not permitted to read all of the newspapers on account of her age, rather than her sex. Many of the pages she looks at now with Ciel are therefore quite new to her.

"Oh... what does that mean?" she asks, not really understanding a certain item she is looking over.

Ciel colours when he realises that she is looking at a report complaining about how the American press is spreading completely untrue rumours about the involvement of a certain royal personage in the Cleveland Street matter. Of course she would know little of the matter; no detailed talk of it would have been permitted to reach her ears.

"It's just a scandal that American newspapers are trying to turn into a bigger thing than it really is," he tells her. "False rumours are truly matters that are unfit for the eyes of anyone with good sense."

They turn the page, and look at other things. Ciel is pleased to find that when the news and editorials are factual rather than sensational, and written logically, Lizzie understands the reports as well as he does, and can speak of them intelligently. Even when she does not fully grasp the significance or meaning of something political or legal, she asks good questions, and absorbs the answers well.

"I didn't think you had any interest at all in the great matters of the world around us," he remarks.

"I won't pretend that I have any _great_ interest in terribly serious matters," she admits. "But I _do_ like to know about the things that will affect my life, and the lives of the people I care for. Mother knows all about these things. I want to know as much as she does when I grow older. I won't want to be as fierce as she is, but I do want to be as accomplished, and strong."

"I'd like to see you grow into that woman you want to become," he tells her.

"You really wouldn't mind that?" she asks with a brilliant smile.

"I wouldn't expect anything less of you."

Ciel means it, because he was raised by strong women, and has no place in his life for mindless, flighty, spineless creatures. His mother may have been very gentle, not at all the intimidating sportswoman Aunt Francis has always been, but she was perfectly well-educated, capable in an understated manner, and quietly determined in her own way; his Aunt An of course was a doctor, and the life of the party as Madam Red; and Aunt Francis is a marchioness like no other. Even the sole woman currently living in his house, Mey-Rin, is a deadly shot with her sniper's rifles.

Really, the Phantomhive manor is unsuitable for someone who can be a goddess of the hearth and nothing more. In any case, no one can be a more perfect housekeeper than Sebastian.

_Sebastian._

How is Ciel to create a world where Lizzie's existence as his countess will not mean the termination of all that Sebastian is in his life? As he thinks that, he feels a surge of forgiveness for his demon, and suddenly wants to see him. Happily for him, Soma steps into the morning room then.

"Soma, will you play a game of draughts with Elizabeth while we wait for elevenses? There's something I need to do. It won't take very long. I'll be back in a little."

Leaving them to amuse themselves, Ciel makes his way quickly to the kitchen. He peers in to find that Baldroy and Agni are in there with Sebastian, but his devil senses his presence at once, turns around from the stove to lock eyes with him, and in a few seconds, casually finishes up what he is doing, and walks into the passageway without drawing attention from either the cook or the prince's manservant. He snatches Ciel into his arms without a word and kisses him deeply, bringing a blush of desire and relief into the boy's cheeks.

"Did I say I'd forgiven you?" Ciel whispers fiercely when they break apart at last. He is still clasped tightly in his demon's arms.

"You didn't have to. I knew."

"Bastard," he hisses, but with a smile. "Whatever you're doing out there, just don't get yourself into trouble, do you hear me?"

"I shall be as careful as I can reasonably be, Young Master."

One more quick kiss, then Sebastian sets him down on his feet, and strokes his cheek with the back of his gloved hand. Ciel puts his own hand up to clasp Sebastian's, and as he does, Agni, who can move every bit as silently as Sebastian, steps into the passageway and sees them. Ciel drops his hand at once. Sebastian lets his linger on the boy's cheek, unashamedly, possessively. Both lock eyes with the Brahmin man.

Agni looks from one to the other for a second, then returns to the kitchen without a word.

***

While Lizzie, Ciel and Soma enjoy their elevenses, and later their lunch, it is inappropriate for any of the three who encountered one another in the passageway outside the kitchen to speak of what happened. But after lunch, Agni says what he has to say.

Sebastian has long attempted to advise the Brahmin that here, he is a guest. But Agni never sees himself that way, and continues to help out around the manor in every way he can. As Sebastian clears the plates and cutlery from the dining table while Ciel, Soma and Lizzie disappear into the recreation room for card games, Agni comes up to him to assist him, commenting: "Last week, when Prince Soma dined with the Prince of Wales, His Royal Highness confided in him, in my hearing, how upset he was that his son's name had been dragged into the Cleveland Street affair. But it seems that Her Majesty refuses to allow any kind of intervention, to teach her grandson to cultivate a better reputation for himself over time."

"Is that so?" Sebastian replies in non-committal fashion.

"It is," Agni says firmly. "The conversation drifted to similar scandals of years gone by, and how the law used to punish the people involved much more harshly. Prince Edward mentioned an incident in 1810, about a place in Vere Street where men used to meet other men to engage in intimate acts. A _16-year-old boy_ – a child in my eyes – was sentenced to death by the courts and hanged that year for being associated with that house. Prince Edward disapproved greatly of such harsh punishments being meted out to young people, and expressed his relief that times have changed. But while the sentences passed by the courts may have altered, the times have not progressed that much, Mister Sebastian. People, and the way they judge other people, have not changed at all."

"I am aware of that, Mister Agni."

"I do not know what you are doing, precisely. But I sincerely hope you are not putting that boy in danger. You were careless, or reckless, enough to be seen by me interacting in an unusual way with him, unusual for a butler and his lord, at least. May you not have been careless enough to be seen by anyone else – I won't talk, but others might."

"I have no intention of endangering him."

"I hope not, or we shall find ourselves duelling again, Mister Sebastian."

"I must tell His Lordship that he has more than one male ready and willing to do battle for his honour," Sebastian remarks wryly.

"This is not a laughing matter," Agni reminds him.

"Of course not."

"You may think me hypocritical to speak to you thus, when we all know that before Prince Soma spared my life, I was the worst human being in my world. I killed, raped, mutilated, stole... I was filth, worse than the worst. But precisely because I have crawled through the mud of humanity and sunk lower than beasts, I know what people are capable of. I would never want Lord Ciel to go through any more suffering than he already has."

"Nor do I, Mister Agni."

"If I so much as suspected that you were hurting him, or endangering him in any way, I would stop you. But I sense no fear from the child, no ambivalence in him concerning you, and nothing but genuine affection and untainted love for you. So I will leave things as they are, and I shall say no more, unless you put him in harm's way."

"You sense love in him, you say?" Sebastian asks curiously.

"Of course. Can't you tell?"

"I can't say that I can."

"Perhaps you should, Mister Sebastian."

They load the plates from the table onto Sebastian's wheeled tray, then Agni bows and withdraws from the room.

***

Ciel draws his silver-backed hairbrush through Sebastian's deep-black locks, darker and glossier than the earl's, which is a softer onyx with hints of blue when it catches the sunlight. It is bedtime, and the earl has just had his bath and been dried and combed and fussed over by his butler, so he now wants to groom him in return.

"Are we cats, to be licking and grooming each other's coats?" Sebastian teases Ciel.

" _I'm_ not licking _your_ hair," Ciel replies. He is on his knees on the mattress, behind Sebastian who sits at the edge of the bed in his nightshirt. "I like brushing your hair. It makes it softer."

"The Earl of Phantomhive brushing his butler's hair. What would Agni say?"

Ciel blanches. "He's not going to tell Soma about seeing us outside the kitchen, is he? We'll be questioned and nagged and ranted at forever if Soma gets wind of this."

"I don't think he will mention it to the prince unless he has to."

"Under what circumstances would he have to?"

"If he were directly questioned by Soma. Or if he believed I was doing you harm, and needed to explain to the prince why he was attacking me in your defence, as another example."

"Why would he believe you were doing me harm?"

"If he saw me sinking my teeth into you like _this_ , for instance," Sebastian suddenly whips around and pins Ciel to the mattress, playfully taking a pinch of the flesh on his shoulder between his fangs.

Ciel laughs and smacks Sebastian about the head with the hairbrush, only to have his arms pinned down too, and his left ear nibbled by those sharp teeth.

"Shall I bite this right off?" the devil murmurs in that very ear.

"Do that and I shall bite something _else_ right off," threatens Ciel.

"You couldn't get your mouth around it."

"Then I shall just have to tear and chew."

"What a dis _gusting_ thought."

"Oh, indeed, a thought worthy of a _demon_."

"Well said," Sebastian agrees, leaving off the ear and giving him a tender kiss on the mouth.

Ciel returns and deepens the kiss for half a minute, then arches his neck in a silent command for Sebastian to kiss him there – he likes having his devil attend to his throat and the sides of his neck with his lips, like a gentle predator who never makes the final kill.

Sebastian obeys, purring as he explores the tender throat: "I shouldn't have awakened such desires in you for my selfish reasons."

"Shut up," Ciel orders.

But he speaks on: "If I had not desired you first, and tempted you, you might never in all your life have looked at a male as a possible lover. You would by now be begging Lady Elizabeth to marry you at once."

"I would _not_ ," Ciel growls.

"You would be dealing me stinging slaps for daring to so much as _look_ at you with a single dirty thought in my head."

"I slapped you then because you were still no more than my butler and my hound. It was most improper of you," Ciel chides him, then softens. "But even at that time, I thought you the most dangerous, most beautiful creature I knew."

"Hmm," Sebastian smiles. "And I you, considering the degree of control you had over me at the time, under our contract."

"But not now?" Ciel asks, gently pushing Sebastian back so he can see his face.

"Oh, you are still perfectly beautiful."

"Dangerous, I mean."

"Dangerous? Especially now. When you no longer have control over me, but so very much more power instead."

Ciel stares at him, not understanding, but wanting to trust that he will. As Sebastian gazes deeply into those eyes of the deepest blue, he remembers what Agni said as they were clearing the dining table.

"I really shouldn't have awakened your desires so early," the devil whispers.

Nonetheless, with a soft exhalation that is nearly a sigh, he bends his head to kiss Ciel again. Ciel meets his tongue with his own, and for the first time after so long of never being able to scent Sebastian at all, he tastes the power and danger of his demon, with the warmth of fondness, and a bittersweet touch of rue.

***

"Somerset will return to England no more, Your Majesty," the Prince of Wales says to his mother. "His fears of punishment are very real, with the warrant for his arrest issued ten weeks ago."

When the prince was younger, he had still called the queen "Mama", as his sisters continue to, but that time has long passed. Between them, there is natural loyalty, and the attachment between mother and son, however their views may differ; but the easy family intimacy is no longer there. At most meetings between them with the least touch of formality, she is always "Your Majesty" to him.

"Well he deserves it, the predator," is the queen's reply. "Those poor boys. The acts they engaged in were horrible, but surely they would never have done such perverted things had men like Somerset not offered to pay them for it."

"I understand that one of the boys has already been released from prison."

"Good. It is to be hoped that he and the other young people will repair their lives and redeem themselves," she says.

"Unlike them and their patrons, however, my son was not involved with the brothel, yet he has been drawn into the scandal. How can he begin to redeem himself when he did no wrong to begin with? How are we to deny his involvement at this point in time when every denial will sound like a lie?"

"Lord Phantomhive was right to advise you as you told me he did then, but you did not heed him. If you had, this matter of Eddy's would not be under discussion at all. But since it has happened, some good may come of it. Eddy would not even have been whispered about had his conduct been more proper all these years."

"I can only hope, Your Majesty, that Eddy will have the opportunity to redeem himself in the eyes of the world, although in this instance, he should never have had to repair his reputation, as he did nothing wrong."

"He is young yet. There will be time. I am not worried about that. What worries me at present is that when the Earl of Phantomhive offers good advice, those who ought to listen do not. I have determined a course of action that I hope will have him taken more seriously by you and Eddy in future. He will be named an advisor to the throne upon his attaining the age of twenty-five years. Even before that, I shall do more for him. When he marries the Lady Elizabeth Midford, I shall bestow upon him the rank of marquess. It will give him greater power and authority to protect Eddy, and Eddy's children to come, from the shade they could be cast into through their foolish actions."

"Your Majesty, Ciel Phantomhive has more than enough responsibility, as it is. Making him marquess in itself would be a fitting wedding gift, but making him marquess in order to make him a larger shield for us, and everyone after us, would not be right."

"You have hardly merited enough authority of character to tell me what would be right."

"No, indeed, Your Majesty," Prince Edward admits. "I have not. But I have done all that I can in the past year to be what you regard as the manner of prince fit to be your heir, and I shall pursue that path from here on."

"That may well be so, Edward," Queen Victoria agrees, casting a glance at his portly figure, so different from his father's trim silhouette. "But Somerset's exposure as a patron of this distasteful brothel, and the consequent besmirching of Eddy's name, has confirmed my belief that it is right to give greater authority to Phantomhive, and his children after him. I shall not let you reverse this decision, even if in the secret compartments of your mind, you picture the possibility of my dying before the boy marries. That may well be so, considering his youth and my age. But I shall write my decision down, in the form and with the words that the queens and kings of England have been advised to use in all formal decisions that affect the Phantomhives. It is a tradition. My Uncle William, remarkable individual that he was, told me that it was magic. But of course that is ridiculous – no rational person, and certainly no good Christian, really believes in magic. But it is a strictly followed tradition, nonetheless."

So the queen sits down at her desk and writes, as her uncle, William IV, taught her to through the private documents he left to her – the private documents every monarch leaves to the next.

As she writes, the magic of the old spell Ambrose learnt of, and which he told Sebastian about, releases a little more power into the person of Ciel Phantomhive. Unlike the power from the underworld that Sebastian has learnt how to divert, that which comes from the formulaic decrees of the royal family in relation to Phantomhive cannot be so easily channelled away by him. It enters the earl. The scales tip. The imbalance of power grows.


	30. Bonds

"Women have another opening… here," Sebastian says to Ciel, touching a finger to the skin between the boy's nether orifice and scrotal sac as they lie in bed. "That is the opening you must use for your seed to reach your wife's womb. Be careful, gentle, and very clean with your women. Females have delicate reproductive systems – if you use unclean fingers inside them, or penetrate them here after you have used them, or another lover, in the rear, they may suffer infections that could render them infertile."

"You mean I mustn't…" Ciel begins to ask, colour rising to his cheeks.

"Quite so. No penetrating anyone in the arse immediately prior to making love to your female in the usual manner. Thorough washing with soap and water is necessary between the two acts. Of course you can always seed your woman first, then take her in the behind if she is willing, or a male lover if she is not. Diseases and infections spread easily through unwashed hands and other parts – not just through contaminated food and water. Remember that."

"Stop talking as if you're preparing me for some kind of debauched life with a hundred lovers. I don't want a hundred lovers. If I must marry Lizzie, I'll marry Lizzie, but she'll be my only woman – and apart from her, I only want you."

"What? No mistresses?" Sebastian teases, tracing an invisible line on Ciel's left thigh with his black fingernails.

"Of course not," Ciel replies impatiently, a little moan escaping him as Sebastian touches a particularly sensitive spot behind his knee.

"Then if you have male lovers, don't forget what I've been teaching you either. Cleanliness is important with men too. Devils don't take ill from dirty fingers and cocks, but human males do."

"I know, I know... nothing should touch the mouth or eyes after it's been around or inside _there_ ," Ciel says, repeating the essential lesson from this unusual tutor of his, who is now tasting the back of his left knee as if it were a delicious sweet. "Anyway, I don't want other lovers – male or female."

"But if you do in the years to come, remember that diseases spread fast between mortals. Don't engage in intimate acts with prostitutes or anyone who beds many people. For such a reason, it would indeed be best for you to have only your wife... although I can tell you that devils don't have diseases to spread to humans, so you can do what you like with _me_ ," Sebastian says smugly.

"Says he who hired a prostitute last year," Ciel says tartly.

"I simply cannot pick up diseases from humans," Sebastian remarks even more smugly than before. "It doesn't matter how many humans I enjoy physical intimacies with, or who they are."

"It matters to _me_ ," Ciel growls, sitting up and grabbing two fistfuls of Sebastian's raven hair to make him raise his head from his leg and look up at him. "I don't want you bedding anyone else except when you _must_ , for our underworld work."

Sebastian presses his lips to Ciel's and tastes him hungrily for a long minute, before peeling himself off the boy and telling him: "Neither do I want anyone but you."

"You are to find someone else only when I'm dead and gone," Ciel whispers back, his forehead pressed to Sebastian's brow.

"You are my only Ciel, my only heaven. There will be no one else."

"But I don't want you to be alone forever."

"Have no fear for me."

"I never thought when you first came to me that I would ever have to worry about a creature like you. But I worry more and more about you these days. I don't know what you're doing..."

"Do not trouble yourself over it."

"I cannot help it. Don't go out tonight. Don't leave my side."

"If I sense threats approaching the manor, I must go out. It is my duty."

"Very well, only if you sense threats – although things have been very quiet of late. Nothing's happening in the underworld. The usual troublemakers seem to have vanished."

"Indeed."

Sebastian clasps the boy in his arms, and shares more of his devilish wisdom with him till he dozes off. He holds him close until he senses what he had suspected would be approaching. Then he kisses Ciel on the cheek as he always does each time he leaves him while he is asleep, tears himself away, and slips like a shadow out of the manor.

***

The one who comes tonight is very different from the pawns of before. For several nights now, Sebastian has dealt with mere mortals, many of whom barely knew they were being used by greater powers. People of the underworld they were, easily tempted by a subtle word here and there, driven by visions of greater wealth, greater influence, or rewards, to creep towards the Phantomhive manor with weapons and in numbers, just as the Easton gang had before.

The confessions they made to Sebastian before he ended their lives and took their power were both varied and predictable: _"A red-haired magician told us that if we seized the manor, everything would be ours"; "A man wearing eyeglasses and an oddly cut suit advised our chief that the underworld would belong to him if we destroyed the earl"; "A demon came to our dark master and said all the rewards of hell would be his if we took you down, and the boy after you"; "The spirits of the woods have commanded us, their worshippers, to suppress the child and devil who will be their doom..."_

Tonight, however, the visitor is not human, but a devil. Sebastian has met this particular devil before in hell, and has a passing acquaintance with him.

"You must know why I am here, old friend," says the other demon, who has not bothered to disguise himself as a mortal, but has his black wings in full view, green eyes glowing brighter than a cat's in the night, fangs and claws fully exposed.

"Don't call me that. Devils have no _friends_ , even amongst ourselves," Sebastian replies coldly.

"Ah, but this is as _friendly_ a call as you can expect from one of your own kind," says the visitor cheerfully. "I am here to deliver your final warning. Consume the child's soul as you were originally meant to, and stop this absurd accumulation of power that draws attention from the prince of our realm himself, or expect a much less friendly, _final_ visit in a day or two."

"I shall take my chances," Sebastian tells him, thinking privately that this devil does not seem to know about Carsten's winter visit, which was positively overflowing with the milk of demonic kindness in comparison to this.

"Obstinate fool," the other shakes his head. "You know well that the spell which was secretly cast in the court of the king of England and Scotland some two hundred and seventy years ago is growing unstable because the human idiots who performed it did not do it well. By using it, you are becoming a considerable force that grows more volatile by the day. End the child's life now, and the part of the spell that relates to Phantomhive will also end, because the boy has no issue. The line of that cursed family will thus end with him. The imbalance, instability and danger surrounding you will end also, and you will no longer attract unwelcome attention."

"He and I will both take our chances."

"I never took you for such a witless creature."

"I have surprised myself a great deal of late," Sebastian remarks with irony.

"You've made your last mistake. Our prince will not stand for anyone challenging his position and power. You have grown too strong for his liking."

"Then he should send his best after me."

"He will. You have one more day."

"I shall see you then."

The other devil springs into the air and vanishes from sight. Sebastian swiftly activates a spell of Ambrose's for which he has been laying the groundwork for days, setting up an invisible shield around the manor. It is uncomfortable for him, because as always, that wizard's magic does not sit well with devils. But he performs it well, and is satisfied that it will hold.

Then he returns to Ciel.

***

"Assam tea it is this morning, Young Master," Sebastian says in his gentlest voice as he pours out a cup for the earl, who is glancing through the newspapers, sitting up against the pillows.

There is little news suggestive of underworld activity in that daily publication; all has been terribly quiet of late. So Ciel sets the newspaper down and receives his tea, along with a kiss, from his butler.

"The tea is particularly fragrant this morning," the boy notes, inhaling its aroma and taking a sip. "Excellent flavour, well balanced."

"I chose the leaves from the very freshest batch we have. Now, is there anything in particular that you fancy for breakfast?" Another kiss.

"Poached salmon would be good."

"With a sugar-sprinkled half-grapefruit before that? We have just had some delivered by our usual importers."

"I'd like that."

"I shall also prepare some toast, which you can have with butter and marmalade. You are growing taller by the day; you must eat well."

"I always do, because everything you make tastes wonderful."

"But Baldroy's cooking is very good now, and you may soon praise his dishes as much as mine. I have even taught him how to make all of your favourite sweets. He is doing well."

"I'll still prefer yours."

Sebastian smiles, takes the teacup and saucer from Ciel, and helps him clean his teeth and wash his face. Then he dresses him for the day, pressing light kisses to different parts of the earl's flesh just before covering each spot with garments.

"Can't wait to _un_ dress me again?" Ciel teases.

"That hardly needs saying," Sebastian replies playfully.

The perfect breakfast is followed by a small sweet of chocolate sponge cake. Ciel sits at table alone, for Soma has been in London with Agni since yesterday – one of their tenants has sent an urgent request to rent another of their houses for friends who are visiting from France.

And it is a Sunday, so he has no lessons, but he writes a few letters that he will have the telegraph boys deliver later. He also glances through some of Ambrose's papers, and again feels he is missing something. He has had Sebastian explain to him all the parts he does not fully grasp, and his devil has obliged, but much remains obscure to him.

He puts the papers aside to spend the afternoon fencing with Sebastian, an activity interspersed with many playful caresses and embraces, and one very long kiss right at the end, which they have to terminate well before they are ready to end it, because Baldroy is at the door with meringues and scones, which do indeed prove to be nearly as good as Sebastian's when Ciel bites into them.

"Excellent," Ciel pronounces himself more than satisfied. "Sebastian was right. You are doing very well."

"Mister Sebastian said that?" Baldroy asks, visibly surprised and moved.

"I did," Sebastian affirms. "You have improved greatly, and I shall rely on your continued progress to keep the young master well fed and in good health."

Baldroy looks ready to throw his arms around the butler in response to such rare praise, but Ciel's presence keeps him on his best behaviour, and he settles for a sniffly "Thank you, Mister Sebastian!" before wiping his nose on his sleeve and withdrawing from the recreation room.

When Ciel has had his fill of scones and meringues, Sebastian takes him upstairs to sponge the dried perspiration off him from the fencing, and puts him to bed for a nap before dinner time.

"Lie down with me," Ciel whispers, with the duvet drawn up to his chin.

"For a little while. I must not neglect my other duties."

"Just a while."

So Sebastian lies with him till he falls asleep. Once he is sure the boy is dreaming, he kisses his hair and leaves the bed again, for something is banging against the shield he erected last night. He casually strolls through the manor, walks out through the door in the side of the south wing, and looks upwards. With his devil's eyes, he sees what none of the humans in the manor can see: a small army of spirits of nature, normally retiring and secretive, now driven by some force to fling themselves at the magical shield.

Sebastian has crafted the shield to permit ordinary humans and himself to pass through it freely, but nothing else of the immortal worlds. It is also designed so that the humans within will not be able to see anything of the otherworld outside it – even if such creatures choose to make themselves visible to mortal eyes. They will not be able to see even him once he passes through the shield. He now springs through that barrier and batters the spirits assailing it, scattering them in all directions until he spies their leader, an ancient nymph of the oldest forests on the Continent, resplendent in flowing robes woven of silk from spider webs, and shimmering green hair that streams behind her for miles in the clear spring sunlight, glistening like the string-like moss which hangs from trees never seen by man.

"You," he rumbles throatily through a fanged grin, springing on her in a flash and seizing her by her millennia-old throat. "I know you."

Stunned that she has been so easily caught, she screams out her surprise into his face. Time was when she could outpace him in seconds... but not now... not... _oh, the pain!_ She grimaces and struggles uselessly against his cruel grip. "How different you are now than when you went by other names, _Sebastian Michaelis_ ," she rasps at him. "You have become so _strong..._ but you are so doomed..."

"What must be, must be."

"You and the child both will end us all if this absurdly ambitious and corrupt human spell that binds Phantomhive to the scale of balance erupts in our faces," she hisses. "If you don't stop the growth of power in him and in you now, we will end you, and destroy him."

"Not so fast, nymph-queen," Sebastian smiles. "We have rules of war among us, do we not, we creatures of the immortal worlds? Unless I am very much mistaken, I have already defeated you."

He tightens his grip on the essence of her being, in much the same way that he held firmly to the ghoul in the churchyard the night he first met John Jarvis. As his powerful devil's hand begins to crush her very existence, her followers assail him, but with his accumulated strength, he hurls them away from him and closes his fingers around her spirit-heart a little tighter, until she shrieks.

"Fall back!" she commands her spirits. "You devil... _damn you_!"

"Hmm," Sebastian smiles, relaxing his fingers a shade as her followers retreat a fair distance. "I am immensely pleased that you were the one who came today, for you are among the great nymph-queens of the ancient forests, one that the practitioners of magic in James I's court had knowledge of, are you not? Because they knew of your race, and trafficked with your people, they had obtained elements from the blood and hair of your folk, and used those elements to reinforce your link with the scale of balance at the same time as they bound the Phantomhives and the underworld to it."

"I _know_ that, demon! Don't tell me of my own deeds!" she snarls at him. "We _permitted_ those petty mortals to do all that with their stolen magic! It was as well for us that they did what they did, for it was powerful magic stolen from spirits and demons that they used. It enabled us to increase our authority in the mortal and immortal worlds, even if it meant the trouble of watching the Phantomhives and the underworld. That is why we are here today, to destroy the cursed child whose every move and every success rocks the scale of balance. His father nearly wrecked the scale with his brilliance and the favour shown him by the Queen of England, but in that instance, a single renegade angel and the forces of the human underworld were sufficient to end him. _This_ child, however, has you, a powerful devil, working for him. The mortal underworld alone has no more ability to touch him, while the monarch and future monarch of England show him ever-greater favour, increasing his power. Now it is for we spirits, and for gods, devils and angels to intervene before he topples the scale and unseats us all."

"Foolish queen," Sebastian says patronisingly. "You think you know why you are here, but you know so little of the truth."

"Is that so now?" she hisses with a mixture of displeasure and pain.

"The universe blindly enforces its own balance," he tells her. "It does so through humans prompted one way or another by forces beyond themselves, and through immortal creatures like us. But not one of these elements ever fully understands what it is doing. That is merely the way of the worlds – to aim for equilibrium without revealing the full picture. However, thanks to a very skilled mortal named Percival Ambrose, descendant of Emrys of Carmarthen, who himself was said to have been a devil's son, I have seen how everything comes together."

"What are you talking about, fool of a devil?"

He smiles before provoking another great shriek from her by plunging his free hand deep into her body, invoking Ambrose's magic to locate and make visible the thing he seeks. He finds it, draws it out, and renders it apparent to their eyes. To those who have the vision to see such things, it appears in the shape of a rope of light.

The nymph-queen forces a contemptuous expression onto her ancient face through the pain, for Sebastian retains his hold on her being. "So you are making visible the link that gives me greater influence over the scale of balance. Petty magic. What has this to do with anything?"

"It has much to do with all that we are going through now," is Sebastian's calm reply as he focuses on the rope of light. "I am, for instance, quite certain that you know nothing about _this_."

The "this" he refers to is what is revealed on the inside of the rope once he opens it up lengthwise with another of Ambrose's magic spells. The nymph-queen is visibly shocked.

"What is that? Demon! What is that _thing_?"

Sebastian answers: "The mortals who meddled with the way the balance of the universe would be enforced may have been petty humans with not a tenth of the genuine power and skill of Percival Ambrose, but the magic they stole from gods, spirits and demons was truly immense. And those humans themselves were crafty and full of untruth, in accordance with the nature of their race. You didn't know, did you, that besides reinforcing your authority with regard to the balance of the universe, they also chained you to each successive leader of Phantomhive, who would himself be chained to the scale of balance?"

"Those mortals put a chain on _me_?" the nymph-queen screams. "I shall hunt their souls down in hell!"

"You have no right to enter hell. But do not unsettle your pretty old head over this, Your Spirit-Majesty," Sebastian tells her. "What I have by now acquired is the power to unlink you from the child, and also to take _this_ from you."

He draws another sharp hiss from her as he extracts from her core numerous threads of power that have hidden amongst the link she had permitted to the scale of balance. They have gone unnoticed by her for well over two hundred years, but Sebastian now exposes them, and in the palm of his hand, they shape themselves into a key.

The nymph-queen staggers backwards with a cry as Sebastian releases his grip on her. She stares at the key, and the link with the secret chain within it.

"I've heard about this kind of thing before, but this is the first I've ever seen of it," she admits with a gasp, still reeling from the pain of his demonic hand crushing her heart.

"I too," Sebastian agrees. "But thanks to Ambrose's insights just before he died, I know what to do with it."

She cries out again as Sebastian severs, with Ambrose's magic, the rope-link between her and the scale of balance.

"Damn you," she hisses at him for the loss of her authority, but does not confess to him that she also feels lighter, unburdened.

The chain, however, that was once concealed inside the rope of light remains where it is. Sebastian plunges the key into that length of chain binding the nymph-queen and her people to the fate of Ciel Phantomhive, and disconnects the link, but he holds on to the end that is now loose and free.

"There, it is done," the demon tells the nymph queen calmly. "You are now unchained from the fate of the Phantomhives, and from the greater influence you had over the scale of balance, which you should never have had."

" _This_ part of the chain is not your problem, demon," she grins at him once she is free of the bind. "Bonds linking a single mortal with a single immortal are always easily torn. It is the other part I can now see with my own eyes – the one that ties the cursed child directly to the scale – that you will have trouble with. That kind of chain forged by that manner of magic cannot be removed until the spell dies. It can only be shifted."

"Yes. It has shifted from one head of the Phantomhive family to the other at the point of each earl's death. And it cannot be transferred to anyone outside the family unless the party is willing, or is a recognised successor to the Phantomhives."

"So you have no one to shift it to, demon," she cackles.

"Wrong," Sebastian tells her with a grim smile, as he plunges the key into the loose end of the chain he has just severed from the nymph-queen, and speaks yet another incantation he learnt from Ambrose. At once, a glow of fire shoots down the length of the link. Although such cosmic links are normally invisible to all, and can pass through walls and metal, earth and stone, Sebastian's new power has rendered it plain to the nymph-queen, who sees that the fire shoots down the link to Ciel Phantomhive, burning up her half of the chain to ashes as it races towards him. The glow from the key circles him once, harmlessly, and continues up into one of the innumerable invisible chains that tie him to the scale of balance. It unlocks the chain from his spirit and transfers its shackles – and its power – onto and into the person of Sebastian Michaelis.

The nymph-queen and her people, untethered from both the scale and Phantomhive, have no further part to play in this war. But she bares her sharp little teeth at Sebastian, and hisses: "Stupid fool. Is that what you want? The power to affect the scale? Why else would you free him from one of those many chains only to tie yourself to the scale? There are countless more bonds on him. I am scarcely the only one who was bound to the scale with my knowledge, and to Phantomhive without my consent, and you know that. If you think the others are going to let you absorb their power the way you did mine – if you think they are going to sit back and watch you grow into a more powerful force than any other – then you are more of a fool than I thought. They'll be coming to stop you, and take you down. I was but the first of many."

With another growl, she spins about and flies away, her followers behind her.

The demon butler smiles to himself atop the shield protecting the manor, and feels the strength he has taken from the nymph-queen settling into him, joining the power that has already accumulated within him. That power reaches impossible proportions, drawing more urgent attention from devils, shinigami, spirits and angels.

 _Good. Let them come._

He slips back in through the shield, steps into the manor as if nothing had happened, and drops a word of praise to Finnian for not destroying one of the rose gardens. The young man gapes – Mister Sebastian _never_ praises him – but he is already walking into the house, where he pauses beside Mey-Rin as she polishes the banister.

"Mister Sebastian!" the housemaid looks up at him through her clear eyeglasses, and he observes that she no longer blushes furiously when near him.

"Mister Agni would make an excellent husband for you, and you would make him a strong partner and loving wife," he tells her. "Don't hesitate to accept him if he asks."

This time she does blush, and splutter incoherently, as he walks on.

He proceeds to Tanaka's sitting room, takes a large, folded, sealed envelope out of his inner coat pocket, and hands it to the steward, saying: "Please do not trouble yourself to go through the contents of this envelope until the day after tomorrow, Mister Tanaka. It merely contains letters that should not be sent out yet, and papers that do not require attending to until later in the week. Please see to them if I should be otherwise occupied in a few days. In the meantime, please enjoy your tea."

Sebastian then returns to Ciel's bedroom, slips back into bed with him for a few more minutes, and wakes him when it is an hour to dinner. He changes the boy's rumpled clothing, and prepares dinner himself – they can safely have roast beef while Soma and Agni are not eating with them, for they try not to consume beef while their Hindu friends are with them. He also makes an impressive chocolate cake in Viennese style, with a layer of apricot jam between the rich icing and the sponge, which is thoroughly enjoyed first by Ciel, then the rest of the household.

Later in the evening, Sebastian looks in on Ciel in the library.

"It is nearly your bedtime," the butler tells him.

"So it is."

He puts his book down and leaves the library with Sebastian a step behind him.

"Are we having a bath first?" Ciel asks when they reach the privacy of the upper levels.

"No, Young Master," Sebastian bends down to whisper into his ear as they walk towards the earl's bedroom. "A bath would be pointless, as I will be getting you rather dirty in a few minutes."

With no one else on this floor, Sebastian takes the risk of scooping Ciel up in his arms, drawing a chuckle from him, and carrying him into the room. The fire is burning in the fireplace, the lamps are lit, and the drapes are closed.

"It's been a perfect day," Ciel breathes against Sebastian's neck.

"Let me see if I can make it a perfect night too."

He starts lowering the boy to the bed, but Ciel wraps his legs around his waist and clings to his shoulders, pulling him down onto the mattress with him, forcing Sebastian to arrest his descent with one arm to avoid falling right onto him. Ciel laughs, rolls him over, crouches very low astride him on all fours, belly to belly, and ministers to his demon with his hands and mouth, untying, unbuttoning and unfastening whatever he can, till Sebastian's front is exposed, and he can caress, kiss, lick and knead the flawless skin. Unlike the earl's skin, which tells the story of all it has been through with old scars and new marks, the demon's body is a smooth canvas that whispers no tales of the past, and remains an unscored sheet which the future will not write on.

"You're perfect," Ciel whispers against Sebastian's chest, teasing his left nipple with his teeth, threatening to bite down on it before tracing its circumference, and its gentle swell and peak with his tongue.

Sebastian vocalises a hum of pleasure. He watches Ciel with keen, indulgent eyes as he lies back on the pillows passively, lapping up the attention the boy gives to each accessible part of his body. He purrs as his little master reaches his hips and strokes with his fingertips the skin from his sides to his thighs, then removes his rings from his fingers before tracing a line towards the centre of Sebastian's body. He wraps his right hand around the base of the rampant organ, and begins to work the skin of it up and down over the rigid core as he has learnt to from how his butler has always pleasured him. Then he unexpectedly takes the tip of his demon's erection into his mouth. Sebastian continues to watch him, garnet eyes bright with arousal and interest, but alert to the possibility of the boy doing more than he is ready for. However, Ciel keeps his hand moving, and warms and moistens only the very end of the devil's prick between his lips and tongue, knowing he cannot take it all into his mouth.

Sebastian relaxes in one way but tenses in another, as that growing but still-smallish hand coaxes and commands him along. His ears pick up a muffled moan from Ciel as he thrusts up an inch or so into his mouth. That little noise excites him. He reaches a hand out to touch the boy's slate-black hair possessively, and stroke the curve of his shell-like ear. Deep-blue eyes flick over to his face, then dart down again to concentrate when he shifts his hips, pushing hard into the hand and mouth enclosing him. Ciel gasps around his girth and length, and pinches his thigh smartly with his free hand – an order to behave and not give him more than he can take. Sebastian smiles at the pinch, delighting in the authority behind it, and thrusts upward much more gently, but with no less satisfaction than before.

Ciel now drags his tongue around the smooth, weeping tip. Sebastian moans, but keeps his eyes locked on those soft-black tresses and the little movements of his head. Once more, those wide blue eyes slide towards his, and Sebastian inhales sharply. A soft cry escapes him, and he throws his head back on the pillows as Ciel shifts his hand and pushes down as hard and tight with his mouth as he is able. Sebastian's seed erupts into the boy's throat – too much for Ciel to swallow – it overflows and drips over the devil's crotch, but Sebastian takes all the more pleasure in the messy abandon and unvarnished desire of it all.

Ciel is breathing even harder than the demon is by the time he raises his head and looks at the spill. He moves to wipe it up with his shirt-tails – but Sebastian, who unlike human males seems to require no recovery time – sits up, pounces on him and tastes the boy's mouth and his own seed together, a potently erotic cocktail that stirs him all over again.

"Haven't you just _finished_?" Ciel, pressed to the mattress, murmurs softly against his devil's lips with a smile.

"Oh, I think I could start all over again," Sebastian returns the smile.

"Mmm... I'm sure you could. But I believe it is your turn to enjoy _me_ now..."

"My thoughts exactly."

He proceeds to undress and savour the delectable creature in his arms tonight, tenderly giving him all he needs, careful still to hold back from acts that may damage his body. Until Ciel is completely sated, he does not rest; until Ciel sleeps, he does not let him out of his arms.

But once the boy is lost to dreams, Sebastian opens his ears to the pounding on the shield around the manor that he has been keeping from the earl all evening, and heeds with his senses the call to war.

The time has come.

"Goodnight, Young Master," he whispers tenderly into his right ear. "Sleep well. Be strong. Defy fate."

Ciel mumbles something unconsciously, but does not wake.

Sebastian smiles, kisses the sleeping boy on the mouth, and says: "Goodbye."

He slips out of the bed, draws the blanket up to Ciel's shoulders, and dresses himself. He leaves the manor and strides out through the shield that protects everyone within it, into the midst of the armies that have gathered to bring him down.


	31. Revelations

Ciel rises from a dream, pursued into the waking world by a rush of images. He stretches in his bed. Warmth and contentment from his night with Sebastian flood his body and heart, but the dream troubles him like a disturbing undercurrent. He cannot pin down specific images from that night-vision, for they wash past his conscious mind in a blur.

He normally stirs only when Sebastian comes in with his morning tea and newspaper, and parts the heavy velvet drapes to admit the sunlight. It is rare for him to wake on his own. Sebastian will be surprised when he comes in...

That thought is interrupted when he glances at the drapes and sees that the thin line of light where the curtains almost meet in the middle is bright – too bright. The sun is high in the sky.

He throws the covers off and walks over to the window. He pulls one curtain aside and looks at the clock on the side table. Half-past nine. Sebastian never wakes him this late.

"Sebastian?" he calls. That shred of the contract which survives allows him to summon the devil from wherever he is. "Sebastian!"

He will come. He _must_ come. Mustn't he?

In an instant, Ciel realises that something is wrong. He _knows_ it. The vague dream visions trouble him again as he slips on his rings before taking a quick swig of water from the carafe on the nightstand to wash down his morning breath.

"Sebastian!" he calls once more.

No answer; no butler.

He runs into his dressing room, which he rarely enters because his demon chooses his clothes for him. He pulls on the essentials: a shirt, clean drawers, and shorts. As he hastily tugs a pair of stockings over his calves, he snags the silk on his blue ring, but he doesn't care about that now. He struggles into his shoes, ties on his eye patch roughly, and hurries downstairs.

"Have you seen Sebastian?" he asks Mey-Rin, the first person he encounters at the bottom of the stairs.

"No, Young Master!" she replies. "I was wondering where he was myself. He always gives us instructions for the day, but I haven't seen him this morning."

Ciel runs into the kitchen to find Baldroy cutting up vegetables on the counter.

"Do you know where Sebastian is?" he asks, though he already knows what answer the man will give.

"No, Your Lordship," the chef replies. "Did you dress _yourself_? Didn't he take you any breakfast?"

By now, Mey-Rin has followed him into the kitchen, and Finny is putting his head round the side door.

"He must have stepped out to see to something urgent," Mey-Rin suggests.

"No," Ciel insists. "Something's happened. I know it."

"Why do you say that?" Baldroy asks, puzzled. "It's hardly the first time he's left the manor for a while without informing anyone. He's been doing that for months."

"He's always there to dress me in the morning – always," Ciel says. "He wouldn't go out without returning in time, or at least without first informing you that you'd have to be my valet for the day."

"Maybe Mister Tanaka will know?" Finny asks.

"Tanaka won't know," Ciel says barely audibly. "Sebastian wouldn't leave like this if he wanted anyone to know. Something's very wrong."

"What is happening?" comes a voice from the kitchen's main doorway.

It is Agni, who has just stepped into the manor after setting out from London early in the morning with Soma in a hired coach, only to find the air here bristling with an incredible, malignant spiritual energy.

"Agni, Sebastian's gone!" Ciel cries, rushing up to the Brahmin. "Can you sense anything wrong? _Anything_?"

The tall Indian bends down and gently holds the earl's thin upper arms in his large hands. "Lord Ciel, there _is_ something in the air. I can't see it, but I can feel it. Something happened here last night, but it isn't here any more."

"What do you mean?"

"I do not understand it myself, but whatever it was, it seems to have moved. If Mister Sebastian went out to deal with it, he may have gone with it."

"No," Ciel shakes his head. "He wouldn't leave me... not now... not after all we've been through!"

"He may only have gone out for a while..." Mey-Rin clings to that hope, but tears start into her eyes as the young master's distress affects her keenly.

"Lord Ciel," Agni says. "I too believe that Mister Sebastian would never leave you just like that. If he did, it must have been for the most important and urgent of reasons."

"We have to find him," Ciel says, fighting to keep his voice steady as he thinks of everything Sebastian has been hiding from him, and which he has not succeeded in uncovering. "I _must_ find him."

He pulls away from Agni and tears out of the kitchen with the rest after him, pushing past Soma who has come to find out what is going on. The prince can only splutter: "Huh? Wh-what's wrong? Ciel? Agni!"

"Mister Sebastian is missing," Agni tells his prince in an undertone as the earl and his staff disappear down the passageway. "Something bad may have happened to him."

Soma stares at his manservant before running after Ciel. The earl is tearing towards Sebastian's bedroom, hoping against hope to find something there that will tell him where his demon butler, protector, friend and lover has gone. He is first through the door. In seconds, the space fills up with the rest of the household, save for Tanaka.

"What should we be looking for?" Soma asks.

"Don't touch anything yet," Ciel says, glancing around. "I've searched this room several times. I'll know if anything is out of place from the last time I looked."

"Why have you been searching Mister Sebastian's bedroom?" Baldroy asks curiously.

"I suspected that something was wrong, but he insisted it was nothing I ought to know about. I shouldn't have _wanted_ to believe him; I shouldn't have _wished_ to believe that all was well," the earl mutters bitterly. "I should have demanded the truth, even if it would have meant quarrelling with him."

He feels sick at heart to think he had so badly wanted to believe everything was fine, throwing himself into what he and Sebastian seemed to be building for the future. It had softened his usual suspicion and ruthlessness, which could have unearthed an answer by now.

Ciel pulls out the bottom tier of the chest of drawers and observes that the bullet he had found previously is still there, with the buttons. He opens another drawer, and another, and another, rummaging through each one.

At first, the others in the room can only stare. Apart from Agni, who saw that private moment between the earl and his butler in the passageway, they are bewildered. They do not understand why Ciel is suddenly, irrationally, frantic about a butler whose welfare he had always seemed somewhat callous about. They do not understand why he talks as if he had a particularly intimate friendship with Sebastian. They still do not see why Sebastian's absence should mean that anything untoward has happened, for he has always appeared more than human, capable of amazing feats, an untouchable being.

But they push aside their confusion once Ciel flings open the wardrobe door and starts rifling through the clothes.

"Young Master, please..." Mey-Rin begs. "We don't know what we can do to help. Please tell us how we can help."

Ciel stops ploughing through the jackets, coats and shirts on their hangers, and turns to look at his staff and friends. For a second, he does not know what to say. If he is wrong about this whole matter, he will have panicked for nothing, and will be needlessly exposing the depth of his relationship with Sebastian. But if these instincts that are forming a great pit in his stomach are correct, then he is going to need all the help he can get.

He speaks at last: "I've looked through everything in this room before, and there is nothing apart from Elizabeth's gift of the black scarf, and a spent bullet in the bottom drawer of that chest, that is a personal possession of Sebastian's. Everything else here, down to his underthings, was supplied by the manor. I need to find something that is out of place. Something that may tell me what he is doing, what he has done, where he has gone."

Agni apart, they still do not understand. But they have done many things before that they do not comprehend, so they snap into action at once.

"Have you looked behind, under and on top of all the furniture before?" Baldroy asks briskly, starting to move items away from the wall.

"Yes," Ciel answers, turning back to the wardrobe to inspect every article of clothing – all the pockets, all the folds, and the lining. "But I last checked a few weeks ago. Something might have been concealed there since then."

"Right," the chef says, lying flat on the floor to look beneath a cabinet.

Finny, Mey-Rin, Soma and Agni join him, grabbing chairs, or helping one another up and down, scanning the top of the wardrobe and the upper shelves, and shifting the desk, chest of drawers and bed. Soma then goes through all the sheets of paper and envelopes at the desk, while Finny lifts the mattress, and Mey-Rin shakes out the bedcovers and checks the pillows. Ciel continues going through every pocket of every one of Sebastian's garments.

Agni peers into the chest of drawers again, before it occurs to him to ask: "Lord Ciel, did Mister Sebastian ever say why he kept this bullet?"

"I shot him with it. He said it seemed significant."

"You _shot_ –" Soma gasps before falling silent, realising that he has no idea how to even begin forming questions to probe deeper into the earl's matter-of-fact remark.

"I wonder if his keeping it in these drawers might point to something else significant here?" Agni asks. "Did you look under and behind each drawer?"

"I tried, but those drawers are heavy, and I didn't have the strength to pull the upper ones all the way out," Ciel admits. "Rather, I _could_ have pulled them all the way out, but they would have fallen on me, and I wouldn't have been able to lift them to slot them back onto their grooves. But I did draw them out as far as possible, and I felt along the backs."

Agni and Finny start pulling the drawers out with ease, depositing them individually on the floor. Finny puts his head into the cavity of the hollowed-out chest, and runs his hands over its inside-back, sides, base and top.

"Nothing," says the gardener.

But at the same moment, Agni goes: "What is this?"

Ciel scrambles over and sees that Agni has found a small envelope glued to the back surface of one drawer. He kneels beside it as Soma hands him a letter opener from the desk, and carefully cuts the glued-down flap. He slips his fingers into the envelope and extracts a folded sheet, written on both sides. The type of paper and the handwriting instantly mark it as being from Percival Ambrose's collection, which he has gone over many times. Yet, all it takes is one swift glance at the contents for Ciel to immediately know that he has never seen this before.

Sebastian has been hiding it from him.

Remaining where he is on the floor, he starts reading, not noticing or caring that the others are crowding behind him, reading over his head and shoulders. The very opening lines tell him at once that this is a letter Ambrose wrote to him, Ciel, during his stay at the manor. So why has Sebastian hidden this from him?

 _I warned you before that devils were devious beings, and I remind you of that here. Your devil claims to be willing to work for you without a contract for your soul. He would be a rare specimen indeed if that were so. But it is my duty to warn you that what appears to be affection and loyalty on a demon's part could as well be something very different._

 _All the knowledge I have mined from Carsten has brought to my awareness the practices of demons. It is their nature to conceal their ends and motivations, because it is a point of pride with them – and was pride not the downfall of the very first devil in existence? – not to be easily read. They do not like to be pinned down. Many of them may not lie completely, but may trade in parti-truths, shades of grey._

 _Perhaps your devil is truly fond of you. But possible it is also that he is attached to you for a purpose. Through Carsten I have learnt that a devil's pleasure is never greater than when its prey is filled with terror and betrayal, particularly when the prey still possesses a certain naïveté. That is why they care to form contracts at all. Purely attacking and devouring souls unclaimed by God is mere feeding; a contract establishes trust, dependence, even affection, and they feed on the pleasure of these emotions which finally prove useless to the humans who feel them. It is why they are often protective of their prey beyond what is necessary – because they want to preserve some innocence in them for their enhanced pleasure later._

 _I do not know if you can trust your demon. He has declared to me and you that he is willing to right the balance of power to prevent harm to you. He seems to mean what he says, but I do not know – I cannot know – if he does. If you choose to trust him, you should be aware that as he proceeds to right the balance of power, he could take one of two directions after a point._

 _When he has accumulated sufficient power to divert the attention of the balancing forces from you to him, he may either fulfil his purpose by holding fast to the very end, or he may turn against you and every other by becoming a power unto himself. The strength he will have attained by that time will make him a force capable of destabilising the powers of hell and earth, though he is unlikely to affect heaven. If he turns against you and everything else, he will become an immense devil among devils. Then you, and more creatures on earth and even in hell than you can imagine will be his mere playthings. Do not fancy that he will remember any affection for you when he becomes such a monster, or that he will show you any further compassion._

 _If he begins to hide things from you where once he was open; if he shows signs of having slain your enemies without your knowledge (so that the power exercised will be his alone and not yours); and if he refrains from possessing you fully in the flesh even when he has the opportunity and desire to, he may be sincerely protecting you. But it could also be his laying the groundwork to betray you, and in the same stroke become a greater demon than Satan himself, one who can shift the balance of the universe in his favour. When that happens, you will be utterly at his mercy, for him to do with as he pleases. Once he tires of you, you will be no more than a fly to him, worth nothing but to be crushed between his terrible fingers._

Ciel is a fast reader. He gets to the end of the letter before most of the others do. However, everyone has read enough by the time he lowers the sheet to his lap and hangs his head over it to learn that Percival Ambrose believed Ciel kept a demon; enough to suspect that this demon might be none other than their missing butler, although the letter does not name him.

Agni is the only one reading over Ciel's shoulders who had any inkling of Sebastian's true nature before this. He was the only one who saw him deal with Sophia Easton's men in the dark of night on the manor grounds; his heightened senses and abilities also give him sharper clues to the nature of others than most humans enjoy. Therefore, he is the least surprised by what he has read, and the first to speak.

"Lord Ciel," the Brahmin says gently. "The revelations in this letter from Mister Ambrose must be a great shock to you, but you must not let them affect your good judgement."

"I don't believe it," Ciel mumbles in a hollow voice, head still bowed.

"Is this really about Sebastian?" Soma gasps. "It also mentions Carsten... does this mean that Sebastian and Carsten are both _devils_?"

"He's a devil?" Baldroy mutters incredulously. "I've always known he was unusual, but a _devil_? Look, Your Lordship, I don't know the half of what's going on here, but if Mister Sebastian has been concealing this letter from you, it doesn't look good."

Ciel shakes his head, and repeats: "I don't believe it."

"Of course you don't!" Soma says angrily. "It's hard to believe that someone you've trusted fully would intend to betray you! But listen to me – I once believed Agni had betrayed me, when the truth was nowhere close! Listen to Agni too – don't let this affect your good sense..."

Ciel is visibly trembling, shaking with an emotion that could be fear, rage or misery – the others cannot tell, with his dark head bowed like that, his shoulders sagging.

"Young Master, please..." Mey-Rin sobs. "The hiding of the letter doesn't look good to me either, but Mister Sebastian wouldn't betray you, no matter who... no matter _what_ he is!"

"I believe so too!" Finny wails, great teardrops wetting his face.

Baldroy, more cynical than the others, takes a while to think about it. But at last, he declares: "He may be a devil straight out of hell, but all I've known of him is that he cares about you, Your Lordship. I know he even cares about _us_ in his own peculiar way – and I don't mean caring the way I care about the hens I'm going to cook for dinner one fine day–"

He breaks off when Ciel raises his head, and gets to his feet. He is still trembling, but when the others look into his single exposed eye, it is blazing with an odd kind of anger. The earl crushes the sheet of paper in his left hand, trembling with emotion as he growls: "That is exactly what I meant when I said I didn't believe it. I _don't_ believe it!"

"You mean..." Soma starts to say.

"That _BASTARD!_ " Ciel roars at the top of his voice, making everyone jump, as he flings the crumpled letter to the ground. No one here has ever heard him shout so loudly before. " _Stupid_ bastard! Did he think I would be fooled by that? Did he really think I would believe it?"

"But it really is Mister Ambrose's handwriting, isn't it?" Finny hiccups through his sobs. "I know his writing – he wrote a lot while I sat with him."

"Yes it is," Ciel snarls, blue eye glittering with anger, heart thumping with the knowledge that while he once would have believed the worst of Sebastian without difficulty, he would now stake his life on the conviction that he would never betray him. "It is Ambrose's writing. It is a letter to me. But there is no possibility in all the levels of hell that I would believe it contains the whole story. There's something else we haven't found. Keep looking!"

As they search the room again, Mey-Rin sniffles: "Mister Sebastian spoke so kindly to me yesterday, and gave me some good advice without my seeking it. He's never done that before."

"He said nice things to me too, yesterday, about my care of the gardens," Finny starts crying again as he remembers Sebastian praising him.

"He charged me with taking care of His Lordship's meals and health," Baldroy mutters. "As if he was getting ready to leave, now that I think about it."

Ciel freezes midway through his scrutiny of one of the desk drawers. He turns around to face the others and says thoughtfully: "So he seemed to be saying goodbye... but he didn't hand anything to any of you?"

The three servants shake their heads.

"Soma and Agni were away from the manor yesterday, so... that leaves Tanaka!" Ciel cries.

He springs up from the chair at the writing desk and runs out of Sebastian's bedroom towards Tanaka's sitting room on the second level of the manor.

"Tanaka!" the earl calls, bursting through the door of the steward's room.

The old man is in an armchair, contemplating a green porcelain bowl of exquisite proportions.

"Your Lordship," he says in some surprise, as everyone else pours in through the door fast on the earl's heels.

"Tanaka," Ciel approaches him urgently. "Focus your thoughts, and your memory. Think hard. Did Sebastian give you anything yesterday? Or say anything to you?"

The steward blinks at the earl through his eyeglasses for a few seconds before he locates the piece of memory he seeks, which floats about with all the other fragments of information drifting loose in his head. "Oh, yes, Mister Sebastian handed me a sealed envelope yesterday. He said I would not need to look at it until tomorrow, for it held some correspondence that was not to be sent out yet."

"Where is it?" Ciel asks.

"Here, Your Lordship," Tanaka replies, reaching across to the square table before him and picking up a large brown envelope, which shows marks of having been folded before.

Ciel eagerly takes it from him, tears the flap open, and pulls out the contents, which prove to be several smaller, sealed envelopes. The names and addresses on most of them quickly mark them as no more than letters of business relating to services provided to the manor and Funtom. One, however, catches Ciel's attention, for it is addressed to John Jarvis.

The earl seizes a letter opener from the writing desk at the side of Tanaka's sitting room and slits open the envelope with Jarvis' name on it.

"What if it is a strictly private letter to Mister Jarvis?" Soma asks.

"If it is, I shall apologise to Jarvis later," Ciel mutters. "But this is a crisis."

He sets his back to the desk and faces outward, intending to read the letter by himself this time. In any case, the others do not peek as they did before, lest there be something in there that Jarvis would not like others to know about. As Ciel pulls a thin, folded sheet out of the envelope, something else comes out with it – yet another, smaller, envelope, also sealed. This one has Ciel's own name on it.

The earl first scans the single sheet which had been wrapped around the smaller envelope. It reads simply:

 _Mister Jarvis,_

 _Please do me the favour of keeping the enclosed, sealed letter in your possession until the day you observe that Lord Phantomhive has grown up, found happiness in life with his own wife and children, and no longer thinks of me._

 _Even if you never see that day, or if you should lose the letter, or fear that you may die before being able to give it to him, do not trouble yourself over it. The boy's happiness would not increase by being reminded of me. Even if he never reads it, it would not really matter. I would be no one to him by then._

 _Sebastian_

Ciel puts this covering letter down on the desk, and tears open the smaller, sealed letter. He feels his blood run cold as he unfolds several sheets of paper covered with Ambrose's handwriting. These are more papers he has never seen before, which Sebastian has kept hidden from him. They are plainly a continuation of the letter pasted to the back of the drawer in Sebastian's room.

 _What I have written about thus far in this letter to you are the possibilities, the worst of betrayals that could happen. But since penning that earlier portion, I have spoken at greater length to your devil, and I believe he is the only being in all the worlds we know of who has the capacity and the will to save you from your fate._

 _I have had a revelation, an epiphany. Perhaps it has come to me only now, after all these years, because I am dying at last – being so close to death must have given me the leap of insight that has hitherto evaded me. Why has it taken me so long to see this? I must quickly write this down, in this brief interlude of lucidity in the midst of my confusion._

 _Child, I thought at first that it was all a matter of balance. I thought that if I bound your devil to you as a slave, you would rule the underworld and never give it the opportunity to rise up against you, while retaining full control over the fate of your soul. You would thus never be weak enough to be destroyed by your enemies. Then all you would need to do to preserve your family would be to act judiciously and loyally with the throne of England, and govern your own deeds._

 _But I see now, with this new blaze of understanding, that while such balance might have preserved your forebears, it did not save your father, and will not save you. The process, you see, is becoming damaged and unstable. It is ceasing to work as it used to. Balancing the forces is no longer enough to save your life. I have done much research into the nature of the forces of balance as they relate to Phantomhive, but only now – only on this night, do I suddenly understand everything clearly, and must scribble all this down quickly by the fading light of the fireplace._

 _I see now that a spell was cast. There is no other explanation for the way things have turned out. It must have been done some time after the death of Queen Elizabeth. By my rough calculations, it was cast in the reign of James I – most likely without the king's knowledge, for his hatred of witchcraft and devilry was well known. It must have been done in secret by some of his meddlesome courtiers with strong superstitions and strong belief in otherworldly things. These people must have feared and envied the Phantomhives and their potential for immense power. They must have sought ways to continue using Phantomhive to protect the monarch of England, Scotland and Ireland, while keeping the agency in check now and again by pitting the things of the underworld and otherworld against them, so that your family could always be there to do its work, but never grow too strong._

 _I see now that those meddling courtiers must have stolen magic to cast the spell – there is no other way they could have done something so vast. I know of no other mortals with the kind of magical prowess my family had, so they had to have stolen the magic from beings they trafficked with. In those days, they must have had knowledge of devils, angels, grim reapers, fairies, elves and nymphs, amongst other folk. The true angels of heaven would not have dealt with them, but renegades like the one who killed your parents might have struck agreements with them for their own reasons, and either permitted the spell, or unknowingly had magical elements of their kind pilfered from them._

 _I realise only now that these other beings must have been knowingly or unknowingly linked to the spell, and also to the House of Phantomhive. Because of the spell, these otherworldly forces, most likely without fully knowing why, are drawn periodically to attack and weaken Phantomhive. Ostensibly, their acts balance the power that would otherwise keep building up in the Phantomhives, who seem to have been formed to accumulate strength. The spell appears to have worked well for more than two hundred years, but something must have gone very wrong with it by the time your father was murdered. If the spell was meant to weaken Phantomhive without utterly destroying it, then it ought perhaps to only have wounded your family, or at most taken your father alone, but spared you and your mother. Instead, your mother too was murdered, and you all but died – in fact, if my investigations are accurate, you would certainly have died had you not accidentally summoned your devil._

 _The spell therefore must already have been unstable when it nearly extinguished your family. It is in all likelihood growing more unstable by the day. I suspect that the instability of that spell is not only channelling into your person more power that attracts ever-greater danger from other forces, but is even transforming you into an outlet through which the imbalance of the world can be righted. But Ciel, you are merely human, and a mere human cannot survive being such an outlet. If this continues, your complete and utter destruction – sooner rather than later – is the only possible outcome._

 _Sebastian has recently revealed to me, in private, that you had once attempted to end your own life. It is a theory of mine, though I have no proof, that even such small things as your inclination to destroy yourself may be subtle effects of that old, damaged, corrupted spell. You are supposed to live, not to perish at such a tender age. But this corrupt magic spiralling out of control will not spare you, unless someone with the strength, power and determination to save you can relieve you of its oppression, and shift the outlet of balance away from your person._

 _I am pleased now that you disrupted my own spell to bind Sebastian to you, for that impulsive and compassionate act has by all appearances bound him to you anyway – but with the bonds of true devotion rather than the chains of unwilling enslavement._

 _I believe that your demon can and will shift the outlet of balance from you onto himself, and transfer from your spirit to his own the numerous chains that have bound every head of Phantomhive both to the cosmic scale of balance, as well as to the otherworldly creatures who come to weaken your family at intervals._

 _No mere mortal could do it. And no one, mortal or immortal, would be willing to do it. Except he who is devoted to you in every way, so much so that he would lay down his life for you._

With shaking hands, Ciel turns the last sheet over to see a short note penned on the blank surface in Sebastian's elegant handwriting:

 _Young Master, forgive me. I promised to be with you till the very end, and for a time, we both believed that end would come with your physical death. It appears as I write this, however, that it will be my end that parts us._

 _May you think so little of me by the time you read this as to be unaffected by these words, for in defiance of the darkness of my nature, I wish you nothing but good – joy and peace, light and hope, and a life filled with the love you could only know without me._

Ciel stares at these final words from Sebastian – words the devil had intended him to read only years from now, if ever. There is a strange, leaden feeling in his hands, his legs, in a tight band around his head, warring with the sickening pounding of his heart and an emptiness in his belly. In almost mechanical fashion, he positions the covering letter to Jarvis neatly over the sheets with Ambrose's writing and Sebastian's last note, folds them perfectly along the original creases his butler had made, and puts them back into the larger envelope. He tries to tuck the envelope into his jacket pocket, but realises he is not wearing a jacket. So he holds it in his right hand, steadies himself against Tanaka's desk with his left arm, and steps stiffly towards the door of the room, feeling as if his knees are bending awkwardly as he walks. It is as if his joints will either lock up and render him immobile, or fold under him as he moves, so he takes every step carefully, deliberately.

"Lord Ciel?" Agni speaks, not knowing what to say, for no one else knows the contents of the second part of the letter.

Ciel compels himself to keep walking, until the urgency of the situation gives rise to a silent scream deep inside him – from himself to himself – to start running, because he does not know what hour Sebastian left him, or how much danger he is facing this very moment, or even if he has already... no, no, _no!_

He forces his unsteady legs into a run, till he is sprinting along the passageway towards his study – for he realises now that the numerous stacks of papers Ambrose have left behind, and the knowledge he can glean from them, may be his only hope of ever seeing Sebastian again.


	32. Confrontation

_Demon._ _Possessed of a key._

Engage, incapacitate, subdue, remove key, effect transfer, disengage.

 _Shinigami. Unlinked._

Tear open, disable, cast aside.

 _Pack of twelve fairy folk. One linked._

Shatter eleven, seize the one, take key, unlink, transfer, disengage.

 _Angel, long unconnected with heaven._ _With key._

Thrust claws through, seize chain, remove key, transfer, break wings, discard…

One after the other, Sebastian takes them on, over and over again. They have come, all of them, armies behaving like a mob. Some are certain of their mission to destroy a devil who has surged beyond control with power he has seized; others feel only the pull of a spell from more than two centuries ago, which should never have been cast. The pull is especially strong for those who are knowingly or unknowingly chained to Phantomhive and linked to the scale of balance. Thus, to his satisfaction, they are all here – all the keys, all the chains.

He has been battling them for hours, the vast power he has accumulated giving him speed and strength he never had before, while his enemies, in their numbers, get in each other's way.

 _Elf._

At first, they stood in an uneasy alliance, thousands of them of different species, decrying his acts and the threat he posed to the balance of the world. Then when they learnt of the chains secretly concealed within the links they had allowed to the cosmic scale, they had begun to quarrel with one another as he stood alone and amused in their midst. That was when he had attacked them and seized several of their chains for himself. They had promptly swooped in on him all at once, but lost him in the melee while starting fights with one another. Now, they are coming at him one, two or three at a time, and he is handling them with insouciant ease. But they are relentless, and he is unlikely to last the several days needed to destroy them all. Though he has acquired terrible power, these beings are not mere humans; they are devils, angels who have deserted heaven, soul reapers, nymphs of many forests, and numerous fairy folk who usually keep to themselves, but will emerge for war if their autonomy and safety are threatened by one such as him.

 _Devil._

His most important task here is to aim for the ones bound to Ciel with chains that in turn shackle the boy to the magical scale. Once he has transferred all the chains to himself, he will have done his work. Ciel will be free of the bonds, almost completely free of the spell, no longer to be slowly crushed by the burden of turning into an outlet through which the imbalance of worlds can right itself. The only hold of the original spell on him then will be his connection to the crown of England. That cannot be severed without the monarch's cooperation – not without harming the earl. But at least it is a humanly manageable burden, and Sebastian trusts that Ciel's cunning will drive him to continue persuading Prince Edward, or his successor, to uncollar him eventually.

 _Soul Reaper._

With crystal clarity about his duty to the boy, he dispatches opponent after opponent. Every creature gathered in this space is immortal, but that does not mean he, she or it cannot die. Any devil, angel, soul reaper, nymph, elf or sprite can be destroyed by magic, supernatural weapons such as soul reapers' scythes, or other immortal beings. As he engages them in combat, he only cripples some, but utterly destroys others, leaving what elements remain of their immortality to go where they are meant to.

 _Angel._

That is what will happen to him in the end. He will be annihilated one way or another before he leaves this space. Whether the remnants of his immortal nature will disperse or remain in one place, whether those remnants will retain any form of consciousness, he does not know. Unlike humans, who have body and soul and spirit, and whose souls and spirits continue after their physical deaths, immortal beings are largely spirit to begin with; their bodies are often disposable. So he does not know what will become of his spirit when he is destroyed, no more than any living human knows what will happen to his soul when he dies. He only knows that in the last year of his long existence, he has lived his life well, far better than he lived it for millennia before then. He is ready to meet his end.

One strong devil comes at him. Sebastian is pleased to engage him in combat, for he has a chain and key on him. How did the spell determine how to distribute the bonds amongst all these beings? Perhaps it was conducted over a period of time, and whoever responded was linked to Phantomhive and the scale as and when contact occurred. Perhaps the spell randomly selected individuals from each race whose representatives agreed to deal with the humans who wielded the stolen magic.

"Why are you doing this?" the devil snarls in his face, as they grapple for the upper hand.

"You would not believe me if I told you," Sebastian smiles, finding an opening, seizing the back of the other demon's head and forcing him down.

"Thanks to you, we have learnt that chains binding us to Phantomhive were secretly concealed by those spell-working mortals in the links to the cosmic scale we permitted. Why do you not give us time to discuss the ramifications of that revelation, instead of attacking us and wresting the chains from us?" the devil hollers from beneath him. "Why snatch the power of one immortal after another, and confirm everyone here as your enemy?"

"You would never understand, and there is no time to explain."

He plunges his claws into the other's body, extracts the link and chain, and with the speed granted him by practice and power, locates the key, unlocks the chain, burns the unneeded half, and severs the rope-link. He is doing this immeasurably faster than when he dealt with the first nymph-queen. The other end of the chain locks onto his spirit, one of many he has collected; one less on Ciel. He hurls the devil away after ensuring he is sufficiently incapacitated to be out of this battle for at least a day.

"Fools!" roars a rogue angel. "He absorbs the power of each creature he disconnects from the scale of balance, and grows stronger with each triumph. Keep those of your kind with any link to the forces of balance to the rear, and send others to the fore!"

Sebastian sighs. That will make his task a shade harder. But he has transferred more than half the chains already. Not so very many more to go. Fortunately for himself, it appears that the prince of his realm was not among those who cared to personally respond to the lure of the spell more than two hundred years ago. He would be a troublesome one to tackle, even with enhanced strength and power.

Suddenly, he hears the boy's call. _Sebastian?_ The pull it exerts on his entire being is almost irresistible. How easy it would be to abandon this war, fly to Ciel, wrap the boy in his arms, shut his eyes, and hope for the best. But how terribly selfish that would be, to flee towards his master's voice for just one more hour with him, one more minute...

 _Sebastian!_

He ignores the call and dispatches another opponent, one who to him is virtually worthless, for he has no chain he can unlink from Ciel. A low-ranking Shinigami, that one was. Speaking of Shinigami, where are Grelle Sutcliff, William T. Spears and Ronald Knox? He spares a swift glance at where he last spied the band of soul reapers, and spots Grelle's flaming red hair. It will be interesting when those three finally swoop in to engage him in battle...

 _Sebastian!_

His heart aches from the near-unbearable tug. The child must be confused and upset. But a pack of nymphs from forests other than the one governed by the nymph-queen he had fought yesterday converges on him. He grimly locks Ciel's cry away into a deep recess of his heart, and tackles the platoon of warrior-nymphs with a little more difficulty than he had anticipated.

He is slowing down, despite his unnatural strength. Every hit and every contact takes its toll; every second of this battle wears infinitesimally on him. Ciel's calls have also found that tender place in his heart reserved for the boy alone, and for the tiniest moment, he softens under the melting trickle of regret. But the moment passes, and he marshals the echoes of his young master's cries towards hardening his resolve. With renewed viciousness, he grins and plunges deep into a phalanx of sprites to seize two of them. He sustains some damage from that dive into their midst, but the scratches are worth it, for he surfaces with two more links to the scale, and leaves a heap of broken creatures in his wake.

Sustained by the additional power he has grasped, he dives again into another cluster of fairies, and emerges with yet another two chains on his spirit. He is now so heavily linked to the cosmic scale that he must begin to channel some of his power towards keeping the scale in position. As a human, Ciel had no authority to control the scale, but as a devil, Sebastian does. He must perform this important task, for if the worlds become unbalanced, everything and everyone – Ciel included – could perish in a planet-wide catastrophe of earthquakes, wars, floods, fires and famine. What would be the use of fighting so hard if the one most precious to him should die along with the rest of humanity?

This will weaken him somewhat, but it must be done. As he shatters the body of a devil who has lunged towards him, he releases some of his power along the lengths of the chains to the scale, to keep it even.

He swivels about and tackles another two rogue angels with satisfaction and a smile, breaking them in several places before hanging back to see what carnage he has caused amongst the armies. Being Sebastian Michaelis, he takes a second to appreciate the fact that through all of this, he has not once resorted to assuming his demonic form, but has remained impeccably attired as a Phantomhive butler, with a coat that is largely intact, except for where he sustained the scratches from his two boldest dives.

One more soul reaper – one more chain. One more group of nymphs. No chain. One more devil and yet another chain. A little more release of power to steady the scale. He is doing quite well –

Then the first major hit comes.

He gasps, looks down at where a long instrument protrudes from his right shoulder, feels the blood spurt out of him, and looks up to see the unemotional, bespectacled face of William T. Spears, who has driven his scythe clean through him.

***

 _Sebastian... Sebastian..._ is the rhythm to which Ciel's heart pounds, as he races over to his study, where Ambrose's heaps of material are neatly stacked on the shelves. Soma, Agni and the Phantomhive staff fill the doorway of the study in time to see the boy slam a pile of papers onto his desk and begin to flip madly through them.

"Agni," the earl says in a calm voice – too calm for anyone's liking – as he turns over sheet after sheet. "Did you say that the disturbance you sensed in the air as you returned to the manor this morning suggested that something had happened here in the night, but whatever it was seemed to have gone somewhere else?"

"Yes, Lord Ciel. What significance does that have? Do you know what has really happened to Sebastian?"

Continuing to turn over leaf after leaf of the papers before him, Ciel replies: "He is in great danger. I believe he is facing his enemies and mine in a world that occupies the same space as this world we are in. But it is a world we cannot see or touch, because it is separated from us by magic. Sebastian and I were once trapped for hours in one such nowhere-world, which was not heaven, hell or earth. I shall find a way to enter that damned space in which he is going to _die_ unless someone stops him – and I will do everything in my power to save him. I only need to know how the hell to get there. Ambrose said I had an innate talent for such things... he said I had natural abilities without ever having tried to cultivate them, considering that I accidentally summoned Sebastian four years ago – and when we were in that nowhere world, I apparently turned it into a great forest while I was unconscious. So I can do this. I _will_ do this."

"Lord Ciel," Agni says warily. "Do you mean that you intend to work a magic spell?"

"Yes."

"No!" Soma cries, stepping forward. "If you've never done this before, it will be terribly dangerous. Agni and I know about magic – many people practise it in India, in different ways and forms – and we know spells are very risky for the untrained!"

Ciel looks up at him, his wide blue eyes filled with a pure, grim determination. "I must do this, and I will," he states in a voice that announces he will brook no opposition.

"Sebastian would not want you to!" Soma cries.

"I don't care what the bastard wants right now," Ciel says firmly. "I'm going to him, and when I see him, I will slap all the sense he has lost back into his stupid head, and I will drag him back here with me, even if all the devils of hell come after us."

"Lord Ciel, I take it that the second letter you read has assured you that Mister Sebastian did not betray you?" Agni asks.

"Yes."

"If that is so, and if he is battling your enemies and his right now – for your sake, I assume? –how could you risk wasting the sacrifice he is making for you by putting yourself in danger?"

"He should have thought before making such a sacrifice whether I would regard a life without him worth living or not," Ciel mutters angrily, continuing to search the pages for the particular spell that he remembers having seen in his previous scanning of the papers.

Yes. Here it is. Something Ambrose wrote especially for him. It details what he did to create the boundaries of the nowhere-world that was a reverse-world anchor for the spell he had originally created to bind Carsten, and which he had used to attempt to bind Sebastian to Ciel. He had explained once to Ciel that the spell he had crafted had required that kind of anchor – the way machines engineers use to lift large loads need enormous counterweights to keep them upright – because it had to bind a being that could belong to more than one world. In these papers, he had written the details of how to craft such a spell, as well as how to identify the boundaries of a reverse-world that might be generated by someone else, how to open a doorway into one's own or someone else's sealed-off world, and how to locate someone who might be inside one of these spaces.

Ciel strongly suspects that Sebastian, or one or more of the beings he is battling, must have enclosed their field of battle within such a space, so that their clashes would not resonate through earth, heaven or hell, and no mortals would witness the terrors of their progress. He is taking a purely intuitive leap, but he can test it to arrive at a reasonably accurate judgement.

To pinpoint Sebastian's location, he needs something from the devil's body, if he is to follow Ambrose's instructions. The first item that comes to mind is the locket-pin Sebastian gave him, which holds a twist of his hair braided together with his demon's hair. It will mean destroying the precious braid, but this is an emergency. It cannot be helped. He is about to run upstairs to get the locket when another thought strikes him.

"Baldroy, would you please bring me that spent bullet in the bottom drawer of the chest of drawers in Sebastian's room?"

Baldroy hesitates for a moment as he looks from Ciel to Agni and Soma. Soma looks almost despairing, but Agni finally looks resigned, and gives Baldroy a discreet nod, as if to say: _Better do what he wants now, and we shall see how we can protect him as we go along..._

The man sprints to Sebastian's bedroom, finds the bullet, and brings it back to Ciel. The earl studies it with a magnifying glass, picks up a pocket knife, and carefully scrapes something off its rim, where it is slightly flattened and deformed from having passed through the demon's body.

"What is that?" Finnian asks, peering at the speck Ciel carefully tips into an envelope.

"This may be a speck of Sebastian's dried blood," the earl murmurs. "His blood always returns to his body eventually, when it has seeped into his clothes, or if he is lying in a pool of it – unless he prevents it from doing so for various reasons. Or unless it is too far from his body, or obstructed by something solid. It seems the flattened folds of this bullet trapped a little of it. It might work."

He goes over portions of Ambrose's writing again to be sure he has the details right, then he prepares a blank sheet of paper which he marks with magical words to demarcate its dimensions as representative of heaven at one end, hell at another, and earth between them. Other symbols, carefully circled, represent directions, definitions, positions and commands. Ciel asks for a lamp, rummages around his desk drawer for a pin, and heats the sharp end of the pin in the lamp's flame for a minute. He lets it cool, wipes off the soot with a clean piece of gauze, then pricks his finger with the pin. He smudges a drop of his blood onto the part of the paper that symbolises his own location within earth. Taking the envelope with Sebastian's blood in it, he carefully shakes the speck out onto the paper, into a circle drawn around another magical word that instructs the spell to locate someone.

He checks Ambrose's instructions again, and begins speaking an incantation that will start the process of finding the being to whom that bit of blood belongs.

***

John Jarvis has felt the silver disc Sebastian gave him twitching since half-past-nine in the morning. The butler told him it might twitch occasionally if Lord Phantomhive was upset or agitated about one thing or another. He need not worry about such minor movements. He would know without a doubt, Sebastian had said, if the boy was truly in the greatest distress. The movements would not be minor.

For now, they are small, albeit persistent, twitches he senses. So Jarvis tries not worry about Ciel, and goes about his duties to his parishioners.

***

"You have become a dire threat to the stability of the earth, where all of us ply our trade, even to the dimensions beyond earth," William T. Spears denounces Sebastian in almost uninterested fashion, propping up his eyeglasses with his free hand while his other hand twists the sharp, secateur-like blade of his long scythe within the hole it has made in the devil's chest. "You have also become a dangerous power unto yourself. If the earth is consumed because of the imbalance you create, immortals who reside within the different dimensions of the earth will be uprooted, and we whose duties involve humans will serve no further purpose. Even if you do not destroy the world, and are doing this for power alone, a devil of such magnitude as you are becoming would only gorge on souls by the thousands, and we soul reapers cannot allow that. Therefore, you must be eliminated, and the chains you have put on yourself severed."

"Not so fast," Sebastian grimaces, immobilising the scythe's blade with his fingers. "You may not have noticed, but such chains cannot be severed. They reattach themselves to the one they have been cut from by force. Only one with the key to each chain, who is willing and eligible to have the chain transferred to him, can remove even one of them."

"That is largely true," Spears agrees. "However, there is provision made for a process of severance using the original elements of the spell that formed them – the only drawback to you being that such a process also destroys the one to whom the chains are linked."

"I see you've done some investigation," Sebastian smiles grimly, forcing the scythe backwards out of his body with all his strength, and lashing it away from him with a stroke of his arm. "So why don't you let me finish putting all the chains on me, _then_ you can sever the damned things and kill me?"

As the scythe rebounds, Sebastian seizes the portion of it directly above the blade, and shoves the full length of it back towards the Shinigami who wields it, nearly catching him in the face and forcing him into a stiff but well-executed back-flip.

"Sebas- _chan_?" Grelle rolls the pet-name off his tongue with an edge to his voice as his scarlet figure emerges from the Shinigami pack. "What are we to make of that singular statement, you naughty creature? Are you suggesting that you came here fully intending to die? If you did, won't you let it be at _my_ hands, oh Romeo?"

"It appears that you have the capacity to provoke sensations of nausea in me in any space, dimension or world," the devil remarks with distaste. "Count yourself fortunate that you are not possessed of a chain and key, or I would snap you in half to remove them from you."

He gathers his strength, and springs like a flash of unearthly black lightning past Grelle, slashing the redhead's nose as he passes him to reach a brace of demons who have chains on them. While Grelle screams bloody murder, Sebastian scuffles with the devils and finally relieves them of their concealed bonds, acquiring two more. He does not come out of this pass unscathed. His fellow-demons have slashed his hip and arm, and the perfectly cut and stitched Phantomhive butler's uniform suffers further damage.

"I too am curious about what interests the scarlet soul reaper," shouts a fairy king loud and clear from the heart of his group of people. "Answer us, demon – have you come here to die? If you have, why? There are easier ways to perish. Why rock the great scale of balance at all?"

"Why did you permit yourself and your people to be linked to the scale by a mortal spell worked using stolen immortal magic?" Sebastian asks the fairy king in return.

"We immortals cannot work one another's magic, but humans can steal and use all kinds if they are skilled enough. They can amplify each magic by combining it with others," the king replies. "Those mortals used an immense blend of magic to offer us a link to the powers of balance. We determined that it would give us control over the fate of worlds. We knew other beings had permitted themselves to be thus linked to the forces of balance. My people had to do likewise, lest the destiny of our worlds be influenced by others, but not by us."

"You were all tricked by those deceptive mortals," Sebastian declares. "They had only one stupid, petty end – to keep a powerful human family in check over the ages, and they used all of you immortal beings to do it for them. Your influence over the powers of balance was only a by-product of what they wished to achieve – a secret connection between you and the mortal house of Phantomhive. That was their despicable aim – to turn your people against Phantomhive every so often, to weaken that family."

"We know that now," the king agrees. "But I do not see why it matters. If a human family is decimated from time to time when it becomes too strong, what is it to any of us?"

"That is the reason I am here battling all of you," Sebastian growls. "Because you do not care, but I do!"

He throws himself at the fairy king, seizes him as he did the first nymph-queen, and unlinks him from the scale and from Ciel, then shoves him away before returning to the relative safety of the empty space at the centre of all the gathered armies.

The fairy king's followers prepare to rush Sebastian, but their ruler holds up a hand and keeps them back. Sebastian has not damaged him much in the lightning-swift process of removing the chain – he has sustained very little injury, and he will heal. Rather, his curiosity grows, and he fixes the somewhat battered devil with a pair of silver eyes, asking sharply: "Do you mean that your sole purpose in facing us all here today is to free and save the last, cursed child of the Phantomhives?"

"Yes."

"A mere mortal child? Do you truly expect any of us to believe that you, a devil, would do all this for a _human child_?"

"That is the core of the present conflict, is it not?" Sebastian answers. "You would never believe such a thing possible."

***

"He is not in hell, nor in heaven, but within a separate dimension on earth, as I suspected," Ciel murmurs, inspecting the portions of the paper which Sebastian's speck of blood – after mysteriously turning to liquid – has crept towards and seeped into. He checks the sheet several more times against Ambrose's guide to interpreting a basic chart such as the one he has drawn. "He is close by."

"Can you determine exactly where?" Baldroy asks.

Ciel refers to another sheet, then uses his pocket knife to cut out part of the paper into which Sebastian's blood has seeped. He asks for a small, shallow dish of water and a needle. Mey-Rin runs to fetch a ramekin dish with two inches of water in it, as well as a short tapestry needle. Ciel immerses the blood-soaked scrap of paper in the water with an incantation, and floats the needle on the water. The needle begins to swivel. When it settles in one direction, the earl looks in the direction it points in: directly outward from the front of the manor.

He gathers a few sheets of Ambrose's papers that he thinks he may need, folds them, and buttons them securely into one of the deeper pockets of his shorts, then picks up the makeshift magical compass. Holding that object carefully, Ciel leaves the study, hurries down the stairs, and steps out of the house. The needle readjusts, pointing him forward. He begins to walk in the direction it indicates, and everyone follows.

***

"Liar," a rogue angel scoffs from the midst of the horde. "Demons are full of untruth. No one would believe so preposterous a declaration from the unclean lips of a devil."

"I expected no other response," Sebastian states coolly.

"You know, therefore, that what comes next is your end."

"Not before I do what I came here to do," the butler growls and leaps into the fray, towards another chain, unheeding of the slashes, stabs and blows that lacerate his form, draw ugly gobs of blood from him, and diminish his strength.

He came here with a mission, and he will accomplish it before he dies, for he has existed more than long enough, whereas Ciel has barely begun to live. The boy needs a chance – he only needs a chance...

***

"Here!" Ciel cries, stopping a quarter of a mile from the front of the manor house, where the forest begins.

"My senses tell me that we have just stepped through a kind of magical shield," Agni observes. "I thought I felt it as we drove towards the manor this morning, but I was too distracted by the swirling spiritual energy in the air to be certain. Now I am sure."

"Sebastian must have put up a shield to protect us in the manor," Ciel says. "He and Ambrose did that before, when we needed to keep Carsten from attacking Ambrose. Sebastian learnt a hell of a lot of magic from Ambrose in the month that he stayed with us, and I would wager no mean amount that he's learnt even more since from the papers left behind. I think he has erected this shield around the manor to prevent immortals from passing through to hurt us."

"So the enclosed, otherworldly space you were talking about earlier would have to begin only outside the shield, am I right?" Agni asks.

"That is most likely. The needle indicates that one possible entry point to it is here before us."

"Can you open a doorway to it?" Soma inquires.

"If I follow Ambrose's instructions, I ought to be able to."

The earl sets the compass on the ground, and takes out one of the sheets of paper he put into his pocket before leaving the study. He goes over what is written, then refolds it and puts it back into the pocket, which he buttons down securely.

He speaks a line of magical words, extending his arm with his fingers pointing outward as if he were stiffly holding out his hand to shake someone else's. As he draws his arm firmly downward, a line of light appears, as if an invisible surface were being sliced open by his fingertips.

"This must be the kind of opening Sebastian said we emerged from after being trapped in that nowhere-world," he tell the others. "I am going in. Stay here, and wait for me."

"Not on my life," Soma growls at him. "If you are going in there to help Sebastian, we are all going in with you!"

"No question about that!" Baldroy says. "I swear, my lord, if Mister Sebastian heard we'd let you go anywhere into that space without us, our lives wouldn't be worth living when he comes back. Damn it, they're probably already not worth living, considering we're letting you do this at all!"

"So we might as well go in there with you, as we're dead whether we do or not," Finnian declares, while Mey-Rin nods furiously.

"Tanaka, I want you to go back to the house, in case Elizabeth comes–"

But that very moment, they hear Lizzie's voice calling from down the pathway through the forest. "Ciel! Ciel? _Whatever_ are all of you doing?"

"Lizzie!" Ciel yells as she orders her driver to stop and jumps out of the carriage. "Get back into the carriage, go to the house now with Tanaka, and stay there!"

"Ciel!" she gasps, ignoring his orders and rushing up to him. "What is that light? Did I see you preparing to step _through_ it? What is happening here?"

The earl gives it a moment's thought, and decides that Lizzie has the right to know what is going on. After all, if he can save Sebastian, she may well be the one whose future will be most affected by these developments.

"Lizzie, Sebastian is in danger because he is trying to save me from destruction by a magic spell some people cast on Phantomhive a long time ago. Sebastian is... something more than human, but he is going to die for my sake unless I can stop him. I am going into that world where he is battling my enemies as we speak. We may all perish in there. So I want you to go to the house _now_ and–"

"If you imagine that you are going into any kind of danger without me, then you don't know me very well at all," Lizzie breaks in with a surprising firmness in her voice. "If Sebastian is sacrificing himself for you, and you intend to help him, then I shall too. You are my cousin and my fiancé, and he saved my life, remember?"

Ciel doesn't know if he wants to strangle her or hug her for her loyalty. But there is no time to decide now. He may already be too late to help Sebastian. He stares into her emerald eyes and sees purity and love and determination, and realises that even if he forbids her to come with them, she will in all likelihood jump through the opening by herself. Better to protect her in the midst of their group. He also swiftly decides that if they all come out of this alive, then this is going to be as good a time as any for his future wife to learn what Sebastian is, and what he means to Ciel.

"Agni, Baldroy, Finnian," the earl says firmly. "I don't want one scratch on Lizzie or Soma. Protect them with your lives. Mey-Rin, look out for yourself. Tanaka, stay here in case we need someone on this side."

In unison, they answer solemnly: "Yes, my lord."

With that, Ciel Phantomhive, his household and his friends step through the magical doorway and vanish from Tanaka's sight.


	33. Struggle

They hear the cry as soon as they step through the slit of light that admits them to the space where they believe they will find Sebastian.

" _Mortals!"_

They hear it, but do not understand it, for it is not uttered in a human language. In any case, they hardly notice the shouts, so astounded are they by what they see. Not one of them has ever witnessed such a sight in his or her life, and the magnitude of what Sebastian is up against hits them full in the face.

They are in a vast, featureless sphere, as if they have been shut into an impossibly large, round white box whose smooth inner surfaces emanate light. Filling this space, all around them above their heads, are hundreds – no, thousands – of warlike creatures not of their world, sporting wings, fangs, clawed hands that are weapons in themselves, delicate hands grasping strange swords and staffs, beautiful faces, terrifying faces, magical auras, fairy glamour, flesh like light, flesh like mist, flesh like sapphire, eyes and hair of impossible colours. Countless others lie broken on the ground, bones crushed, wings torn.

Alone in the centre of it all, hovering in mid-air by some power which Ciel has never known him to possess, is Sebastian's dark-clad figure, upright but very still, and covered in blood.

"Sebastian!" Ciel cries. He attempts to rush forward, to get closer to his demon, but Agni holds him back.

The devil seems to realise only now, after everyone else has seen for themselves, that humans are here, his master among them. He turns his head and sees Ciel, and for the first time since he entered this space, a look of fear rises into his garnet eyes.

"Sebastian! Stop this now!" Ciel calls out frantically. "This is not your war. This was _never_ your war! It's my battle. Step away and let me face what I must!"

He struggles against Agni's hold, but the man will not let him go – not into the midst of all these terrifying creatures above and before them.

"Is that the child?" asks the fairy king from high above their heads. "Is that the boy who is the only offspring of the previous head of Phantomhive?"

He speaks, however, in the ancient tongue of the immortals. None of the humans understand such speech, while the immortals present either do not know the answer, or do not wish to reply. The king repeats his question, this time in English, directing it to the earl: "Are you the Phantomhive child?"

"I am Ciel Phantomhive!" the earl answers boldly. "Whatever cursed magic bound the fate of my family to that of your people, and to the balance of the world, the burden has fallen to me, not Sebastian. He has nothing to do with this. Leave him be, and deal with me instead!"

"Bold words, young mortal," an angel speaks. "But your demon has taken your burden upon himself. You cannot change that. Even if he had not, we would never have had to deal with _you_ in this fashion, for you are merely human. When you were chained to the balance of the world and to so many of the immortals here, all was well for us. As a human, you had no authority to rule the balance; you were its victim, waiting to be beaten down each time you grew too strong. But a great devil shielding you while your power grows – or worse, chained to the scale in your stead – has full capacity to manipulate the equilibrium of all our worlds. That is a catastrophe of vast proportions that may damn us all. Nothing you do can alter our need to destroy him, if we are not to leave ourselves and everyone else at his mercy for as long as he exists."

"But he isn't doing this for power!" Ciel answers furiously. "He's doing it to save me! Let him be! I take full responsibility for his actions!"

"Go home, Young Master," Sebastian speaks tiredly from where he hovers, far beyond Ciel's reach. "I never wanted you to see this." Blood drips off his fingertips, off his shoes. Ciel desperately hopes the blood belongs to someone else, but in his heart, he knows it is mostly Sebastian's.

A devil at the far end of the sphere laughs loudly, surprising everyone. "I never heard such naive ideas," he mocks. "Doing it to save you? Who would believe that? Look at you – pathetic little morsel, hardly enough to fill a single one among those of us who care to devour your kind. What demon would sacrifice himself for you? Can't you tell he is doing this solely for power?"

"You don't know him at all!" Ciel yells.

"The ability of humans to delude themselves is infinite," the devil remarks. "I've known him for thousands of years, foolish child. But a mortal's self-deception only makes the job of a demon so much easier, does it not?"

The devil swoops towards Ciel. Agni pulls the earl behind him, and Baldroy sticks the muzzle of a gun into the demon's face.

"Back off, unless you want a bad headache," Baldroy snarls. "If you are what I think you are, I might not be able to kill you, but I can promise you I'll make you sore as hell."

"When I called on your _Sebastian_ the night before last," sneers the devil. "I should have slipped into the manor before he erected that damned shield and toyed with all of you a little, for my amusement. Especially _you_ , little mortal."

The demon reaches a hand out towards Ciel, whom Agni has pushed behind him, and Baldroy pulls the trigger. The devil staggers back in pain – but only by one step, before he roars and spits the bullet back out towards the chef, aiming for the space between his eyes. A swift blur of black is all Baldroy sees in the split second that he thinks he is a dead man, before it sinks in that Sebastian has dived, caught the bullet between his thumb and finger, and interposed himself between his fellow-demon and his humans.

The butler calmly pockets the bullet and says evenly to the demon: "Azazel, you know better than to believe that I would have let you anywhere near my humans the night before last, or that I will permit you to touch them now. You of all beings ought to remember that you have no authority to harm mortals who are innocent of our doings, or innocent of evil."

Other demons seem to agree with their adversary, for they murmur amongst themselves before one of them speaks: "Azazel, he speaks true. We do not have the authority to harm that human male you almost killed. Watch your moves."

Azazel flicks his splendid black wings, shaking off the criticism. He knows all about humans, and the laws by which his kind may interact with them. In fact, he takes great pride in the antiquity of his knowledge, for he it was who first taught the people of the earth all manner of arts and skills. But that was a very long time ago, when he was an angel of heaven, and he has since grown bitter and full of hate. He studies Ciel, then leans toward the group of humans again, saying to his fellow devils: "We may not have the authority to kill that man, but the little earl is not off limits, is he, as he once sold his soul to one of us?"

The fiend extends his right wing. A feather almost brushes Ciel's cheek, but Sebastian kicks the wing away before swivelling on his supporting leg and sending Azazel flying backwards with a second blow of his foot directly to his belly.

The demon butler turns back to face his humans, and drops to one knee. At once, Ciel wriggles free of Agni's protective grasp and throws his arms around his bleeding, battered devil. Sebastian's arms twine about Ciel's back as the boy buries his face in the raven hair, not caring that it is slick with blood.

"Mister Sebastian! Look out!" Agni shouts the warning as Azazel wings in towards Sebastian's back, claws extended.

Too fast for ordinary eyes to see – only Agni observes what happens – Sebastian holds Ciel tightly, springs into the air just far enough to evade Azazel, and comes straight back down again to stamp him into the ground before kicking him away towards his horde of devils, cautioning them: "Advise your leader better, or he and all of you will pay the price according to the rules of heaven and hell for devils who destroy innocent humans of their own free will."

He soars into the air, to the lonely point at the very centre of the sphere of armies around them, his arms wrapped as tightly around Ciel as Ciel's are around him.

"I didn't know you could fly," Ciel whispers into his devil's neck.

"I can't fly while I am in a contract – even a shred of a contract such as ours has become," Sebastian replies softly, nuzzling the boy's hair. "But such powers as I have acquired, and the way I have made this space to be, allow me to hover."

"Fool," the earl breathes.

"Guilty as charged, my lord."

Ciel finds he cannot get another word out of his mouth while choking back the great sob that is forming a lump in his throat, born of both relief and despair. He has not forgotten his threat to beat the sense back into Sebastian's head, but he lacks the heart to do that now, when Sebastian is so badly injured, their situation so dire, and he does not know if they can get past these creatures...

Their moment of private peace is short-lived, as the leaders of several of the races gathered think the matter has dragged on long enough, and order their warriors to resume their assault on Sebastian.

"Enough of this, demon," a rogue angel calls out. "Put the child down, and let us finish this war."

Sebastian returns to the ground and tries to set Ciel on his feet, but the boy clings to him, refusing to let go. Losing patience, a rogue angel, then a soul reaper, then an elf, and a nymph hurtle in their turn towards the devil to continue the fight that had been interrupted by the arrival of the humans.

Apart from the devil-army, none of the other species represented in this war has any direct quarrel with or claim on Ciel. Thus, the four who now fly at Sebastian aim at the devil only, and take care to avoid the child. However, it quickly becomes evident to them that the devil's only priority is to shield the boy, for he takes blow after blow on his back while cradling the earl to his chest, a protective hand over his head, the other wrapped tightly around his body. He takes to the air again to give himself more room for manoeuvre, but continues shielding the boy at his own expense. Ciel struggles, yells and pleads with Sebastian to defend himself, but his demon-lover is deaf to his frantic commands.

Below them, all their human friends are crying. Lizzie, Soma and Finny especially are in floods of tears. Despite Lizzie's dawning realisation that Ciel and Sebastian are intimate in a way beyond what she had ever imagined, she is too tender-hearted not to feel the pain of the cruel blows Sebastian is sustaining to keep his master safe from so much as an accidental wound.

They gain unexpected relief when the leaders of those battering Sebastian suddenly recall their warriors. It has become evident to them that the devil at the centre of this battle may have been telling the truth after all when he claimed purely to want to save the boy from the damnation of an ambitious yet petty spell which is rapidly spiralling out of control.

"My friend," Azazel laughs, pushing his troops aside to return to the fore. "Don't you think you've carried this act too far? You have always had a remarkable ability to lose yourself in the roles you played, but this is taking it beyond anything you ever have. End the drama. Return to your senses, devour the child, and listen to me. Our prince sent me here with specific instructions concerning you. Our armies were to join with the other armies in destroying you if you proved a genuine threat to all our worlds. But he also instructed me to observe you while we fought, to see if you might not be an ally to him instead of a threat to us all."

Sebastian, breathing hard and shedding great streams of blood, continues to hold Ciel in a tight embrace as he hovers at the centre of the circle. No one can tell if he is listening to Azazel.

"Do you hear me?" Azazel continues. "You know that the cosmic forces of balance you are chained to cannot touch God or heaven, neither can they touch Lucifer or those first angels cast out with him. Your power may wreck the rest of hell, but Lucifer and his prime devils are beyond it, just as all of heaven is beyond it. You may well become a greater power than Lucifer himself, but he will still have his untouchable, original kingdom of hell while you tinker with the dregs of the other hells you have shattered. Instead of weakening both of you by damaging much property that could be your centre of command and hinterland, would it not make greater sense to allow Lucifer to extend his protection of untouchability to you and the power you have seized? Then you will have all the authority and resources you desire in an intact hell under him, while he gives you free rein to terrorise every other world besides heaven, in his name and yours."

"Bastards!" Grelle Sutcliff screams dramatically from the opposite corner of the sphere. "You're supposed to be standing with the rest of us for once, instead of striking your own ignoble bargains!"

William T. Spears holds up a hand to silence Grelle, and says much more calmly than his scarlet responsibility: "If you demons are planning to employ Sebastian Michaelis for your own ends by offering him the sanctuary of Lucifer's untouchable hell, then the rest of the immortal races will be obliged to wage war on the infernal worlds. Is that what you want?"

"What do I care about upsetting the rest of the immortal races when all I need to do is to please my prince, the greatest devil that ever there was and ever will be – and in time to come, his second-in-command, who will surely become the second-greatest demon ever to exist?" he asks, sweeping into a playful bow to Sebastian. "Come, my old friend – it is an easy choice. Be destroyed by us all here, or take our prince's offer and reign supreme over the rest of these miserable races gathered before us for endless ages."

"Scoundrels!" Grelle shrieks. "I always knew not a single one of you could be trusted!"

" _Shut up,_ " comes a penetrating snarl from Sebastian himself, causing the entire sphere to fall silent as everyone waits to see what his answer to Azazel will be.

"Well, my friend?" Azazel presses.

"I told you not to call me that," the butler growls. "You are no friend of mine. My friends are there below you, standing boldly on the ground of a place no other humans would have dared enter. And my only allegiance is _here_ , in my arms. Tell Lucifer to stuff his offer up his underused arse."

"Is that all the answer you have for your prince?" Azazel snarls.

"That is all."

"Traitor," the other demon intones menacingly. At a wave of his arm, the army of devils pours toward Sebastian. Sebastian swoops through the air towards Agni, who knows what he must do. The Brahmin takes Ciel and pulls him out of Sebastian's arms even as the boy struggles to hold on to his devil.

With Ciel out of harm's way for the time being, Sebastian soars into the air again and grapples with his demon brethren-turned-foes, smiling coldly at them while coolly dispatching as many as he can, clawing, punching and kicking with devastating accuracy.

"Seize the child," Azazel rumbles an order to the devils at the rear of the pack. "He's fair game, unlike the others."

"My lord, stay between me and Agni!" Baldroy shouts, once he sees the terrifying squad of dark-winged devils homing in on the boy like arrows. The chef and Agni keep their backs to each other, Ciel between them, while Lizzie and Soma are shepherded to either side of the earl, Mey-Rin and Finny protecting them.

In seconds, the little group of humans is smothered by a canopy of wildly beating wings of black, grey, brown and dark gold. The devils are not allowed to harm the other people, but they can try to pull them away from the boy in their midst. Agni fares best, with his remarkable skills, but even he is hard-pressed to fend off so many demons. Finny punches and hurls bodies away from him, but they keep coming back. Baldroy and Mey-Rin dare not fire their weapons in such a scrum, lest they shoot one of their own.

"Young Master!" Sebastian cries out from above them.

"Pay attention to your own fight, _old friend_ ," Azazel rebukes him, a moment before he strikes Sebastian hard for the first time, gouging out a chunk of flesh, and kicking him viciously till he drops like a stone through the air.

Below, a powerful arm reaches into the pile of people and closes over Ciel's arm.

"Let go of him!" Lizzie screams, groping frantically on the ground for something metal-like she had felt her foot scrape against earlier. Here it is, a sword – possibly a fairy sword – dropped by someone else long before the humans had stepped into this space. She squirms free of the tangle of human limbs around her to be certain she will not hurt any of her friends, then underneath that terrible, beating lid of wings over their heads, she lunges forward and thrusts the blade into the shoulder of the demon trying to snatch Ciel from them.

She is not her mother's daughter for nothing.

"Let go _now!_ " she cries, withdrawing the blade and driving it once again through the devil's body.

"My lady!" Mey-Rin shrieks, shielding the girl's head as she slams the butt of her rifle against the devil's face before pulling Elizabeth back and shoving her behind her skirts. But other hands are reaching in, other clawed fingers closing around Ciel's arms and legs, despite every effort by Finny, Baldroy, Agni and even Soma to beat them away.

Sebastian, flung to the ground by Azazel, crawls towards his pack of humans, leaving a trail of blood behind him. His attempt to reach Ciel's side is brutally interrupted by a terrible weight landing on his back, all but shattering his bones, as Azazel jumps onto him from a height to pin him to the spot.

"I'm afraid it ends here, my friend," the winged demon chuckles. He raises his right arm, and drives it down in a lightning-swift stroke towards the back of Sebastian's neck. But it never connects with the butler's prone body, for a streak of black and dark gold bolts in between them out of nowhere, flings Azazel off, and stands defensively over Sebastian.

Carsten.

The new arrival surveys his surroundings, gazing dispassionately at the sea of astonished faces all around him – even the devils assailing Ciel have stopped what they are doing. He calmly pulls Sebastian to his feet.

"Are you quite certain you're not courting me?" Sebastian manages a spot of sardonic humour despite the state he is in. "You turn up wherever I am."

"Keep dreaming," Carsten snaps.

"Didn't you say you would be as far away from me as you could get once this storm broke?"

"Shut your mouth," the other growls.

"Where might _you_ have come from?" Azazel demands of Carsten. "I know your face, but you're a _nobody_ , and if I am not mistaken, you were weak enough to be trapped by a human for half a century."

"You knew, and you never thought to assist me?" Carsten asks coldly.

"Why should we devils assist one of our kind who is too inept and powerless to escape a mortal? Such demons as you deserve to be weeded out."

"I remember now why I spent so much time away from hell," Carsten hisses.

"Come to help your friend, have you?" Azazel says mockingly. "How _touching_."

"We devils have no friends among our kind," he fires back. "I am here because he and his mortals behaved honourably to me when they could have damned me. I am here because the Phantomhive child sacrificed himself to avoid enslaving him and, ultimately, me. I am here because I respect Sebastian Michaelis' courage to defend his human boy, and I wish I had had such courage centuries ago, instead of devouring the woman I cared for."

"I see," Azazel hums. "Well, then, we'll finish _both_ of you together. And _I_ shall devour the child."

Once more, the demon armies pour towards Sebastian, but Carsten, fresh to the fight, beats them back ferociously. While the two devils are thus occupied, Azazel strides towards the human pack, shoves his own demons aside, and reaches in for Ciel. Agni and Finny rain blows on the intruder, and Mey-Rin and Baldroy fire deep into his gut, but those defences stall him for no more than seconds, for even Finny's most powerful punches make so little impact on him that it is as if he were carved from a great boulder of granite.

"Young Master!" Sebastian roars as Azazel's claws close over Ciel's shoulder, digging into the tender flesh, drawing blood.

Carsten swears as Sebastian tears out from under his arm and lunges at Azazel, only to have the other devil thrust the claws of his free hand through his chest, impaling him on his wrist.

" _Sebastian!_ " Ciel screams, losing his last reserve of composure. The boy claws at Azazel and pummels his arm as his friends continue to attack the demon; Mey-Rin and Lizzie are clinging to the earl's ankles, trying to pull him back, but it is hopeless… all hopeless… but what is _that_?

A burst of silver light blinds the humans and even the immortals for a second. Suddenly, there between Azazel and Ciel is John Jarvis, clutching the glass-encased silver disc Sebastian gave him. The disc glows brightly, illuminating Jarvis' middle-aged features. The vicar looks much more surprised than anyone else here – he has finally activated the spell Sebastian imbued the silver disc with, once it became clear that Ciel was in dreadful danger, but he had no idea how effective it would be.

He is stunned by his surroundings, by the fanged face of the black-winged devil he is nose-to-chest with, and by the fact that he has been magically transported here – he was alone in his humble house only a second ago, until the disc began to rattle, and he spoke the words to the disc that the butler taught him. But he quickly absorbs what is happening. The devil in front of him has his claws sunk into both Ciel Phantomhive and Sebastian Michaelis, and Jarvis knows at once what his role is.

He draws himself up, glares sternly at the devil towering over him, and says firmly: "You have no authority to take those whom God has spared. I, John Jarvis, vicar of the Church of the Trinity, declare that you have no right to do this, and that you do wrong to be here at all. Remove your hands this instant from my friends, whose lives God has kept."

Azazel stares. He cannot believe that this – this nondescript _mortal_ – has simply dropped in out of nowhere to interrupt his mission. Yet, he cannot ignore the fact that this man radiates goodness and Godliness, and most assuredly is not among the humans he dares to harm in any way. But he is a proud devil, and refuses to back down. "And if I do not?" he scowls.

"If you do not do as the man of God says, _we_ shall have something to say about it," William T. Spears declares dourly, but resolutely, from where he hovers. "We've watched you demons squabble amongst yourselves long enough, and have concluded that for once, it would be right and just for us to take the side of Sebastian Michaelis and his gold-haired ally."

"That's right!" Grelle shrieks, hopping from foot to foot. "I understand now that Sebas-chan only wants to save his worthless boy, and we're not going to let you devils stop him! Oh, would that he would want as badly to save _me_ from eternal loneliness!"

As Grelle lifts his arm to his forehead and swoons against Ronald Knox, various individuals from the other immortal races give him strange looks, but the fairy king ignores the fainting figure in red and adds his voice to that of the Shinigami. "I agree with the soul reapers – the devil Sebastian has been found not to be hungry for power, but only to save the mortal child from the deteriorating spell. My people will fight you and your armies, Azazel, if you do not release the boy and his demon now."

"So will we," the nymphs and elves chime.

"Even we shall oppose you," one rogue angel promises. "We may all once have been angels of heaven, but my group here only abandoned heaven of our own will, while you and yours were condemned and thrown out. You have no friends here, not among them, and not among us."

"Let them go _now_ ," Jarvis says quietly.

Reluctantly, Azazel drops Ciel into Agni's arms. Then he pulls his hand out of Sebastian's chest. The butler collapses into a bloodied heap on the ground.

"Call off your armies, Azazel," Spears warns the devil.

The demon waves his arm, and his troops move away from the humans, Sebastian and Carsten.

"We're leaving," Azazel announces curtly.

"Stop," Sebastian calls out, a little breathlessly, from where he lies.

Carsten takes the butler's arm and hauls him upright. Sebastian speaks quietly to the gold-haired devil, who lets his wings out, and flies his comrade up to where the bulk of the demon army waits to file out of this space through the opening Ciel made earlier. Sebastian points to one devil after the other, five in all, and Carsten bears him to each of them in turn, to let him take their chains.

That done, Carsten flies Sebastian back to the ground, and Ciel rushes over to him, biting his tears back as he puts his arms carefully around the torn, bleeding figure who looks as if he can barely stand, but insists on remaining on his feet as he embraces the boy.

The devils file out of the opening as, one by one, the remaining representatives of the other races who once allowed themselves to be linked to the scale voluntarily come forward to let Sebastian unlock them from Ciel, until Ciel is completely unchained from the forces of balance.

"Is it over?" Ciel asks, his voice muffled by the bloodied tatters of clothing over Sebastian's chest, willing himself not to cry. He cannot cry in front of all these strange creatures, in front of his staff and friends, in front of Lizzie and Jarvis, Carsten and the soul reapers.

"Not really, Young Master," Sebastian replies with a gentle smile that nearly breaks Ciel's heart.

"What do you mean? It's over, isn't it?"

" _Your_ battle is over, child," the fairy king tells Ciel from his place high up in the sphere, amongst his people. "But your demon's battle continues. We cannot leave him chained to the forces of balance while the spell deteriorates. Once the spell is completely corrupted, it will destroy him. And he has accumulated so much power that his destruction would mean the wrecking of the balance of all our worlds, if he were to remain chained to it."

"He is very likely to be destroyed whether he remains bound to the scale or not, whether we do anything or not," William T. Spears explains. "We can let him be ripped apart by the spell while he remains chained to the scale, in which case he will take several worlds along with him; or we can let him be ripped apart alone in this sealed-off space that he himself created, unchained from the scale, unable to damage anything else. The very process of removing the chains is likely to kill him within minutes, although with the strength he has accumulated, it is hard to say for certain."

"Is there no other alternative?" Ciel roars furiously, turning his head from Sebastian's chest but keeping his arms around him. "Does everything have to end with Sebastian's destruction?"

"I fear so, Lord Phantomhive," a rogue angel says.

"There is nothing else we can do," Spears tells him. "We have explored all possibilities in the research we have done since your devil began to seize power from various parties. Your power had been growing for some time, and we worked to keep you in check without realising the spell was prompting us to do so. Matters escalated when that mortal scandal entangled the eldest son of the heir to the English throne, and the queen considered increasing your rank and power, tipping the scales your way. The underworld rose against you, but your devil intercepted them all, taking their power for himself. Meanwhile, I began to research the history of why the forces of balance involved Phantomhive at all. In all I have learnt, there is no alternative but for the one the spell has chained to the scale to be destroyed – if not by the spell's deterioration, then by being forcibly severed from the scale in the way that the rules of the original spell permitted. The only benefit to the severing is that destruction will be swift and probably relatively painless, that portion of the spell involving the chained one will be instantly terminated, and no one else will be destroyed with him. Minor portions of the spell affecting Phantomhive will remain, but those aspects can be easily managed by humans."

"Immortals cannot use others' magic – only humans can," the fairy king remarks. "So how do you, a soul reaper, intend to use the blend of immortal magic employed in the original spell to sever the chains?"

Spears replies: "I will not be using the magic itself, but rather, the knowledge we reapers have obtained of its workings to imbue our death scythes with power designed precisely to permanently cut such chains of fate."

"But if immortals can't use others' magic, how did Mister Sebastian use Ambrose's magic to put up the shield around the manor, and to create this sealed space?" Agni asks curiously.

"Didn't Ambrose mention that he was a descendant of Emrys of Carmarthen, also known as Merlin Ambrosius, Merlin of the court of King Arthur?" Carsten speaks. "He wasn't merely spouting madness. He _was_ his descendant, and Merlin was said to have been a devil's son. Percival Ambrose was thus most likely descended from demons. Despite his hatred of devils, and his magic being painful for us to use, Sebastian and I could employ it because he had some demon blood, whether or not he accepted it."

"I won't let you hurt Sebastian," Ciel growls at Spears, holding his butler tighter.

But Sebastian strokes his hair gently and tells him: "What must be done must be done. I cannot drag entire worlds with me to their end. The chains must be cut."

"You can survive it, can't you? You're a powerful enough demon... am I right?" Ciel asks, looking up at him fearfully.

Sebastian slips the boy's eye patch off – there is no point in hiding his eye any further. He wants to look into that beautiful blue gaze which he may never see again after this day.

"I do not know, Young Master," he admits.

"Then I will stay here with you until you do," Ciel tells him. "I will be by your side, giving you what strength I can. If you are destroyed, then I shall end alongside you – I won't let you die alone."

"No," Sebastian whispers. "You must return to your world, and live, and try to forget me. I had hoped you would not look for me..."

"No – you hoped I would. You hoped I would know the truth, that's why you left the letter with Tanaka instead of burning it. If you hadn't wanted me to know the truth, ever, you would have burnt the letter..."

Sebastian smiles. "I confess that I did not want you to _always_ think badly of me. But I had hoped you would not find out until later."

"The spell is growing more unstable as we speak," Spears warns. "I must cut the chains. Everyone else, leave this sphere before the force of his destruction takes you out as well."

The other immortals gather their fallen – the dead and wounded – and file through the opening Ciel made. It was Sebastian who formed the sphere, and Ciel who cut into it, both using Ambrose's magic; only wielders of that magic can create an opening, but the two central figures are in no physical or emotional condition to cut open another doorway now.

"I can make another doorway," Carsten says, striding to the side of the sphere and invoking Ambrose's magic, which he knows too well, to open another slit, speeding up the departure of the immortals.

Ciel and Sebastian are alone on the ground with Spears now, and Ciel does his best to support Sebastian as the devil stoically remains standing, wishing to face what seems certain to be his end with the greatest dignity.

Ciel turns his head to look at his friends, and says to them: "Go back to the manor. I'll stay here with Sebastian."

"Inadvisable," Spears mutters matter-of-factly. "You won't survive if you're within this sphere while he destructs."

"Ciel, please," Lizzie cries. "I don't want you to die!"

"Lady Elizabeth," Sebastian says softly, kindly, reaching out to her.

She runs to him, takes his blood-covered hand, and sobs: "Sebastian – I will never forget all you have done to save Ciel."

"Lady Elizabeth, you have every right to hate me – you must know by now that your cousin and I are to each other what your society says we ought never to be."

"I – I know – I could see – I can see that," she hiccups. "But I don't care. I love Ciel. I always will, but if he – if he loves someone _else_ , I still love him enough to let him... even if it hurts..."

"My lady," Sebastian says. "I may never emerge from this sphere. If I do, it may be many years later. May I commit my young master to you, to your care, which will be in so many ways much more than I could ever give him?"

"What are you talking about?" Ciel demands angrily. "I'm staying here with you!"

Lizzie is crying so hard now that she can barely speak, but she chokes out: "I will take the best care of him."

"But if I should ever make it out of here one day?" the butler asks the girl.

"Th-then I – I'll fight you for him – when you're better!" she cries.

"Both of you, shut up!" Ciel yells. "No one will be fighting any more, Lizzie will be safe at home, and I'll be here with you!"

"We have to do this _now_ ," Spears says briskly.

"Lizzie, go!" Ciel tells his cousin. "Mey-Rin, please take her – everyone – please go."

Agni and Baldroy herd the humans out of the sphere, leaving Carsten watching by the opening he created, while Sebastian and Ciel stand before Spears, who prepares to wield his scythe.

"We'll stay here together," Ciel whispers to Sebastian, burying his face in his chest. "I can give form to this space like I did the last one. I'll make plants grow, and water run in this world, and fruit for me to eat. We'll be fine. You'll survive the severing, and we'll be just _fine_..."

"Once I sever the chains," Spears tells Sebastian, "you will most probably have a few minutes before the damage hits. The moment I have done my job, I will step out, and use soul-reaper powers to seal the openings, then seal this sphere with an added layer of magic. I will check on you after several years to see if you have stabilised, or if you are long dead. If you survive and stabilise enough after some years to no longer be in danger of exploding and wiping out life in the mortal realm, I will release you. If you are dead, I will send to hell to let them determine what should be done with your remains – if anything remains."

"You'll be _fine_ ," Ciel repeats, fiercely.

"As will you. Be strong," Sebastian replies, bending down to kiss the boy.

Ciel hungrily devours that kiss, tasting his devil's lips, tongue, blood...

The Shinigami's scythe shoots out, expands in size, scoops up the ninety-nine chains invisible to Ciel between its blades, and with one snip, severs them.

"I estimate that you have two minutes," says Spears, propping up his eyeglasses with two fingers. He turns on his heel and strides out of the sphere through the opening Carsten stands beside.

Sebastian settles on the ground, folding his legs beneath him, as Ciel settles into his lap, wraps his arms around him, and presses his lips to the devil's repeatedly. "You will live – and you will be stronger than ever – and we'll be perfectly well here together," he whispers between kisses.

"I have lived my life well in the past year I spent with you," Sebastian says, smiling gently, looking into those enormous sapphire eyes, in which the hint of tears glistens. He kisses Ciel deeply, after which he holds the boy's head to his shoulder, and looks over his soft, dark hair at Carsten, to whom he gives a barely discernible nod.

Ciel nuzzles the bruised, blood-covered, pale flesh exposed through a tear in the butler's clothing.

"Live long, and live well, and be happy, my _darling_ ," Sebastian breathes, giving one more nod to Carsten.

In an instant, Ciel is snatched up by Carsten as Sebastian allows him to be torn from his arms.

"Sebastian?" Ciel gasps, confused at first, before he realises that his demon has authorised his fellow-devil to take him to safety, away from this place, so that he can be left alone to live or die as fate would have it.

" _Sebastian!_ " Ciel screams, stretching his arms out towards his butler as Carsten races towards the exits that Spears is already starting to seal. "No! Put me down! Sebastian! _Sebastian!_ "

The tears he has been holding back – not just for today, but for years – are pouring down his face now, and Sebastian scents those tears which fall to the ground of this barren world, scents his despair and terror for him, and commits his cries to memory as Carsten leaps out of the closing door with him safe in his arms.

As the openings disappear, shutting the light of his existence away from him, perhaps forever, Sebastian finally lies down. He stares up at the cold, white, domed ceiling of this nowhere-world he has been sealed into, and waits alone to discover if death will take him, at long last, after all this time.


	34. Separation

Ciel punches Carsten repeatedly on the face, shoulder and chest as he is snatched screaming from the sphere where they have left Sebastian to his fate. The devil drops him on his feet and lets go of him once they are in the forest with the other humans and William T. Spears. But he seizes him again in a second when he lunges like a crazed animal at the soul reaper who is engaged in the delicate task of putting the finishing touches to the seal.

Ciel can hear himself screaming, can almost see himself – through a red mist of despair and rage – clawing at Spears, clawing at Carsten, striking Carsten with his fists, nails and palms, to no effect. Somewhere in his logical mind, which has been pushed into a corner and almost shut down, he knows this is unbecoming of him, and futile. He knows every scream and slap expressing his distress must be piercing his human friends and Sebastian too.

He knows it, but he cannot be sensible or logical now – he only knows he must get back to Sebastian, and never be apart from him. _Devour me. Take me. Only let me be with you!_

Over and over, he hits the only devil within his reach while Spears calmly seals the sphere, until no sign remains that it was ever there. When the reaper is done, Carsten releases the furious bundle of limbs he has been holding back, and Ciel rushes at the Shinigami.

"Undo your spell and open the doorway!" he screams into his bespectacled face. " _OPEN IT!_ "

But Spears merely states in businesslike fashion: "The dimension now has two seals over it: a soul reaper's seal enclosing the space, and locks placed on it from within by the demon inside. I am certain you know him too well to believe he would allow you to create another doorway before he is no longer in danger of destroying you along with himself."

"Damn you!" Ciel yells, punching Spears on the chin but provoking no reaction from him other than a readjustment of his eyeglasses. Increasingly terrified for Sebastian, he hits the soul reaper a few more times before Spears mutters something, and Agni quickly steps up to clasp Ciel from behind, pinning his arms to his sides. Spears turns and walks away, disappearing into thin air along with the stragglers from the immortal armies.

Lizzie weeps into Mey-Rin's shoulder, wanting desperately to help Ciel, but fearing that everything she might do will only make things worse for him. The earl keeps struggling wildly against Agni's restraining hold until Jarvis steps up in front of him and puts his hands on his shoulders.

"My lord," the vicar says gently, so quietly that Ciel can barely hear him through the roar of the blood rushing through his head. "Please... stop hurting Sebastian with your despair. I beg of you."

His words affect Ciel subconsciously, for the earl can barely process what is said. _Something about Sebastian..._ He quietens as the man continues to speak.

"Sebastian gave me this silver disc the day after your fourteenth birthday. He told me he had put a spell on it to take me to wherever you were, if it ever showed through its movements that you were in mortal danger or the greatest distress. He asked if I would be willing to be there for you if he should be unable to help you himself. I accepted it although I generally do not approve of magical matters. To be honest, I did not really think it would work. But I wanted to be of help to you, and to him, wherever possible, so he taught me how to allow the spell to do its job. I am glad that I said yes to his request, as it appears that I _was_ able to be of some assistance. That, however, is the very thing prompting me to tell you that I believe you would only hurt Sebastian by trying to make your way back to him now."

Ciel stares back at him as his eyes fill with more tears, and whispers: "Why?"

"Sebastian wants above all else to keep you safe. Can you imagine his agony if you were to be with him inside that sphere, or if you should take him out of it, and he had to exist every second, every day, in fear that he would destroy you along with himself?"

"But can he imagine _my_ agony?" Ciel cries angrily.

"Of _course_ he can," Jarvis replies with feeling, for he too is upset that his demon friend has been left alone in a place they can no longer reach.

Ciel stares at him, tries to speak, but finds that he can produce only more tears. He suddenly feels utterly drained, no longer able to hold his head up. At length, he leans forward till his brow is resting against Jarvis' chest while Agni supports him from behind, not daring to let go.

"We must tend to that wound Azazel inflicted," the Brahmin says. "It mustn't become infected. Where is the carriage Lady Elizabeth came in?"

"Mister Tanaka must have convinced the coachman to go to the house with him," Mey-Rin says, still holding a weeping Lizzie protectively as she casts a glance towards the manor. Her eyeglasses are off, tears running freely though she keeps her voice steady. "I can see the carriage before the main entrance."

"Then we'll walk."

"If it is of any consolation, devils' claws are normally quite clean," Carsten murmurs. "People think we drip poison from every tooth and nail, but it isn't true for most demons. What I know of Azazel is that his claws are sterile for humans."

"That is of great comfort," Baldroy thanks him, smearing his tears across his eyes with his sleeve, for he has been deeply affected by Sebastian's declaration that he and the others are his friends, and by Ciel's unbearable distress. He forces himself to focus now on getting Ciel out of those blood-soaked clothes, bathed, and put to bed.

"I cannot enter the manor while that shield is up, but I will be out here if I am needed," Carsten mutters.

"Wasn't the shield put up with Mister Ambrose's magic?" Finny sniffs, still weeping. "I thought you knew how to use that."

"For most things. But if it is a protective shield of this nature, there is little I can do about it. It should be left up for now, in case any immortals still think of working mischief."

"Is our young master in danger from the demons?" Mey-Rin asks. "They said he was fair game for them."

"Not at present," Carsten answers.

"Not for now," Jarvis agrees. "I know from what Sebastian told me once, that God spared Lord Phantomhive – and also, I believe, Sebastian himself. What God has kept, devils shall not destroy. At least until Azazel's demons perhaps convene and change their minds, His Lordship should be safe. Besides, his present contract with Sebastian, if I am not mistaken, does not have his soul at stake, but is a voluntary contract on Sebastian's part. _No_ demons therefore have a rightful claim to him. Those inside that sphere were wrong to say and do as they did."

"Good. Then let's get him to the house," Baldroy mutters urgently. "He's almost unconscious."

"He is," Soma affirms, examining Ciel's face as he hangs limply in Agni's arms.

"He is overwrought," Jarvis sighs. "Quickly now."

Ciel is in fact conscious, but everything in his body appears to have shut down. His arms and legs are the weight of mountains, his neck a limp thread barely supporting a head that feels like it is made of air. He understands that this is his body's way of forcing him into a state of rest after the rage and terror he has been through, but his mind continues to work furiously, thinking, planning, scheming, to find a way back to Sebastian.

For now, he lets Agni lift him into his arms and rush him back to the house. Indoors, they find Tanaka with Lizzie's worried coachman. The old steward stops them, looks into Ciel's staring blue eyes, then nods to himself.

"What is it, Tanaka?" Soma asks anxiously.

"His Lordship will survive. It will take time to heal, but he will live," the steward pronounces. "Not like in the first days after he returned from death four years ago – there was always a hint of death behind his eye – waiting to achieve revenge so it could all end. But he wants to live now."

Soma takes Tanaka aside to try and get more out of him in a quiet corner, while Finny runs to get hot water ready. Baldroy takes Ciel carefully from Agni.

"I will help you with his bath in a few minutes," Agni says to Baldroy. "I want to prepare a herbal paste that can be used to dress his wound. I know what Carsten said about those claws, but I want to be very sure."

"All right."

The chef whisks Ciel upstairs, where he finds that the boy is able to sit up on his bed. He peels off the shirt that was white this morning, but is now saturated with Sebastian's blood and some of the earl's own, then looks for something to put it in so it will not stain the carpet or floorboards. He grabs an empty pail from the bathroom and drops the shirt into it, then starts on the earl's shorts, first removing the papers that Ciel had buttoned into the pocket. Those papers are only slightly stained by blood. Baldroy puts them on the nightstand before returning to his task.

It occurs to him as he goes along that Ciel must be accustomed to being undressed in a very different manner by Sebastian, and he wonders when it began. For certain, there was nothing unusual between them when he, Mey-Rin and Finnian joined the household – well, apart from the fact that Sebastian was a _devil_ , which he has only just learnt. _Besides_ that, Sebastian and the earl had always been only butler and master. Until… when was it? That astonishing flare-up between them below stairs that night, when the master had knocked on his door and made him carry him upstairs while Sebastian glared – was that a lovers' quarrel?

The boy is too young… did Sebastian take advantage of him? No, the earl has never been like other children – he would not be easily taken without sheer force or seduced against his will, not even by a silver-tongued demon. Indeed, he is more cunning than most adults. Sebastian has plainly never employed force with the child – he would surely have been sent packing, devil or not, if he had. It must have been a step taken by both of them, a mutual affection…

A knock at the door is followed by Agni's appearance, then Finnian's. The gardener prepares the bath, Agni checks the temperature of the water, and Finny leaves the room to give the earl some privacy. Baldroy and Agni partly coax and partly lift the boy into the bathwater. They wash him thoroughly but quickly, paying special attention to his hair, matting with rapidly drying blood, and the puncture wounds inflicted by Azazel. Agni observes that while the earl is silent and still, his physical strength drained, his eyes are alert, as if he is thinking fast and hard.

That is very likely to mean Ciel will recover fully once he has had enough rest. But it also means trouble: the boy will not give up trying to reach Sebastian, and that could put both him and their demon friend in danger.

The bath done, Baldroy dries Ciel's hair and body, slips his drawers on, and lets Agni dress the wound with the herbal paste.

"I'm wrapping the paste in gauze so it will not irritate his skin through direct contact," Agni explains. "The gauze will not prevent it from drawing out poison that may be in the wound. These herbs are said by learned healers in my country to be powerful enough to combat the effects of injury by the claws and teeth of dangerous creatures, both of our world and of others."

Baldroy nods as the Brahmin winds the bandage around Ciel's shoulder, one paste-filled gauze sachet against the wound in front where Azazel's thumb-claw sank into the flesh, and a larger sachet against the wounds on the back, where his fingers dug in.

They button a soft nightshirt over his body, lay him down against the pillows, and pull the blanket up to his chin. Only then are Elizabeth and Mey-Rin admitted to the room. Ciel has closed his eyes, so Lizzie sits on the bed, leans over and kisses her cousin on the cheek before sitting back to watch over him quietly.

"When Lady Elizabeth leaves the room later, have Finny sit with Lord Ciel while he rests," Agni says in an undertone to Baldroy by the door. "I didn't like that look in his eyes earlier. He's planning to get back to Mister Sebastian's side as soon as he can. If he succeeds, it could put both of them in immediate peril. If Mister Sebastian is truly in as volatile a state as those other immortals have implied, he needs to be quiet, calm and alone for a good while."

"I was thinking the same."

So Finny watches Ciel that afternoon. Baldroy relieves him when he comes upstairs with food for the earl, for the boy has eaten nothing all day. The slender pieces of chicken boiled, then seared in a pan with finely chopped greens and mashed potatoes go down easily, but after that, the earl only lies down again and shuts his eyes.

Soma sits with him in the evening; Agni takes over for the first part of the night after Lizzie and Jarvis have left the house, and Finny is again on duty for the second half of the night. However, the gardener is rather sleepy by now, and dozes off at some point. He wakes with a start about half-an-hour after dropping off, but already, the bed is empty and the earl gone.

***

The hours of lying in bed, thinking hard but not sleeping, have not improved his physical condition. He is drained and on the brink of falling sick from over-exertion, but his desire to find a way back to Sebastian lends him energy. By the light of two lamps – one from his bedroom and another which is always in the study, he searches grimly through Percival Ambrose's piles of papers.

Can anything here show him how to break into a sealed space with _two_ layers of magic over it? Anything that will show him how to circumvent a separate dimension's internal seals put in place by the person still inside? Even if it is a complicated spell that will take him weeks to work out, he will do it. He must.

He reads page after page until his head spins, but he ploughs on, ignoring the footsteps he soon hears in the passageway. Finny has found him, naturally. However, finding him does not mean he can force him back to bed. Ciel learnt that much the day he, Sebastian and Commissioner Randall were unable to do a thing as the Eastons died one by one beyond a wide-open room door.

"Young Master!" Finny wails from outside, banging on the door. "You're not supposed to be out of bed!"

"Finnian, I appreciate your care, but please leave me alone," Ciel answers, running his eyes over a leaf of a journal that at first looks promising, but quickly turns out to be useless for his purposes.

"My lord...!"

Other footsteps, other voices, other worried calls. A repeated jiggling of the doorknob, and the jangling and inserting of keys follows. He has locked the study door and windows, but they will soon discover that even if they force these physical points of entry open, they will be barred from entering the room, just as Randall's men and even Sebastian were barred from charging into the Tower apartment where Mrs Easton and her sons met their end.

He shuts out every sound and every spoken word, clinging only to Ambrose's mountains of written words. He does not turn his head when someone scales a ladder and raps at the window. The curtain is drawn, anyway; whoever it is – Agni, most likely – cannot look in. Ciel does not even look up when the study door bursts open at last, when Tanaka agrees that Finnian should break it down. He is now within view of his household and Soma, but does not spare them a glance. They will discover in moments that they cannot enter the room although the door is open, for the earl has erected the kind of shield that Ambrose and Carsten crafted at the Tower. Carsten might perhaps penetrate it after some effort, but _he_ is barred from the manor by Sebastian's shield, which the butler has built to survive his absence.

"Are you using more of Ambrose's magic to keep us out?" Soma howls, after walking into the invisible wall.

"Young Master!" Baldroy calls. "Please don't do this now. We won't stop you later – after you're rested. Take down this... thing you've put up, and let us in!"

Ciel does look up then, his tired eyes burning with determination. "You have all done more than I could have asked, as it is," he says. "Thank you for everything you did to help me and Sebastian. But I must ask you to go back to bed now, and leave me alone."

"At least for tonight, my lord, you must rest," Tanaka pleads, in one of his moments of absolute clarity.

"When I've found what I'm looking for."

"Ciel!" Soma cries angrily. "Please don't do this!"

"Sebastian has been in that prison for too long already. I don't even know if he's dead or alive. I'll rest after I find a way in."

After that, no matter how they shout and plead and scold, he ignores them. Beyond the room, they watch helplessly as he flips through stack after stack, book after book, and reads endless words until the sun comes up. At first, he only looks tired, the shadows under his eyes darkening. Then he stumbles as he walks to the shelf the tenth time for yet another stack of papers. He ploughs on, but the fourteenth time he goes to the shelf, he trips, falls, and lies unmoving on the floor.

"Damn it!" Baldroy hollers, thumping the invisible, transparent wall blocking the doorway. "Mister Agni! Stay here and keep trying to break this shield! I'm going out to the forest to find Carsten. He may have an idea how to get through this thing."

"Wait! The young master is moving!" Mey-Rin cries.

Ciel drags himself up into a sitting position, using the desk as support. He plants his right palm flat on the floor, murmurs an incantation, and the invisible wall drops. Finny tumbles into the study. Baldroy leaps in over him, and scoops up the exhausted boy.

For days, Ciel lies in bed, barely able to lift a hand. They tend to him every minute he is awake. He is so helpless, though, that they are not afraid to leave him alone for the most part while he sleeps, for he cannot even sit up unaided. They pay for that presumption on the fourth day when he disappears again in the middle of the afternoon. He has been able to walk for about a day now, but has concealed that fact from them while he gained strength.

At last, they find him out in the woods, sprawled on the ground in the rain, clutching a leather-bound journal in his left hand while his right feebly draws symbols in the dirt. Carsten stands a few feet away, watching him in silence. The devil meets Agni's eyes as the humans emerge through Sebastian's shield and gives a shake of his head to say: _What he is doing will not work, but he is trying anyway._

Ciel fights Baldroy as the man lifts him off the cold ground. A hoarse cry issues from his throat, every fibre of his being resisting removal from the place where the doorway was sealed.

He is not left alone for a moment after that.

Lady Francis visits him again – it is her third visit since Lizzie went home several evenings ago and sobbed in her arms as she choked out the news that Sebastian was lost in a strange place, and Ciel was lost without him. The lady has never seen her nephew in such a dreadful state. He physically appears to be on the verge of death, but his eyes – both his beautiful eyes, miraculously whole again – are filled with blue fire and a determination to live.

"Ciel!" Lady Francis cries. "Oh Ciel, what are you doing to yourself?"

He will not, or perhaps cannot, talk to her. She sits with him all that day and the next, and feeds him with the devotion of a mother. She has always known that there was something unusual about Sebastian, but has never been much surprised by that, for her father and brother always kept remarkable associates and servants. What does surprise her now is to discover that her brother's son has such a deep attachment to the missing butler. Elizabeth has said nothing of it, but Lady Francis has seen all kinds of things, and she has a good suspicion about what is going on.

She does not approve. She is devoted to her husband and children, and does not believe that there should be other ways of putting couples and families together. However, this is not the time to lecture her nephew about it. Besides, the butler is gone.

It is Lady Francis who first advises the earl's household that instead of keeping him from doing what he wants, or preventing him from going where he wants, they should help him. She has gathered from things Soma and Finny have blurted out that Ciel is trying to find Sebastian, apparently an impossible mission.

Knowing his obstinacy, she believes it would be best to let him try until he either succeeds (in which case she will deal firmly with whatever is unhealthy about the connection between him and Sebastian in time to come), or fails utterly (after which she will remind him that he also has a responsibility to his monarch, his country, his relations and his household).

So after she leaves the manor, Ciel's staff and friends bring Ambrose's papers to his bedroom a stack at a time, returning the materials in their proper order to the study whenever he is done with each lot. Every day, they take turns to help him out to the forest and let him search for a seam between the worlds.

This goes on for days, until the afternoon they enter the forest to find Azazel waiting for them. Finny, escorting Ciel, panics. But Carsten swoops in and stands between Azazel and the two humans.

"Don't fret, little brat," Azazel offers a smile that is a curious blend of mocking coldness and reluctant sincerity. "I hate to say that I come in _peace_ – that would be most inappropriate – but I am _not_ here today to eat you or your friends, or to convey any message of war."

"Why are you here?" Carsten demands.

"To deliver a different message."

"What is it?" Ciel asks, as Finny readjusts his grip on his arm and waist.

Azazel answers: "Only that we of the infernal worlds – _all_ the infernal worlds – have been informed by those who should know that you are no longer among the souls that demons have a right to take. It seems your revised contract with your demon is not the kind of arrangement that would entitle any of us to make a meal of you. So you may rest easy for now, young Phantomhive."

"And Sebastian?"

"Interestingly, we're not to bother him either. It appears that he has become a law unto himself, at least where devils are concerned. He answers to none of us now, not even Lucifer."

"Does that hold true for all time?"

"I couldn't say, but it is possible."

"If the conditions change, will we receive fair warning?"

"Naturally," Azazel sighs. "I did visit your Sebastian the night before battle, to warn him exactly what would happen unless he stopped what he was doing. He didn't listen. Anyway, you may be at ease for now – but don't rest _too_ easy."

"What do you mean?" the earl questions.

"Do you imagine that what you and he have done, separately and together, has gone unremarked?" Azazel sneers.

Ciel narrows his eyes and considers the rhetorical question.

"Did you think you were an exception?" the green-eyed demon continues. "A favourite of _God's_? Use your head."

Ciel is well aware that nothing he has done in the past four years of his life could possibly be acceptable in the eyes of heaven. But he has not considered the implications too deeply, until now.

"You have been responsible for numerous deaths," Azazel elaborates. "By the laws of heaven, that makes you a murderer. Your demon has executed countless humans and several immortals by your command. He was in a contract, so his actions were your responsibility. What occurred in that dimension in which he is now sealed is a different affair – that was an episode of war, and all is fair in war. But before that, entirely of his own accord, he slew many humans of the underworld to keep you safe. _Those_ deaths are entirely attributable to him. You may consider such people evil, but many of those human lives he took were lives he had no authority to end, souls he had no authority to devour. Do you really think you or he will escape condemnation for those acts?"

"No," Ciel states quietly, accepting the sense of what the devil before him is saying.

"Even if you somehow obtain forgiveness for all that, there is the _small_ matter of your carnal intimacy with one another. Dear boy, my fellow-Watchers and I were cast out of heaven for exactly that sort of thing, except that most of us went about it with women, not men. People think it was an immense crime because of the unusual offspring we produced, and perhaps it was. Our defeat and our damnation involved not only the loss of heaven, but a complete alteration of the way our bodies and spirits were composed – any offspring we might think of creating with human females now would not survive. Those rare ones who might thrive, like Merlin Ambrosius, would be no more than human, only perhaps with unexpected powers. We no longer have the ability to sire the great demi-gods of old. So yes, spawning beings of terrible ability was a crime. But I think you know your religious history, even if you aren't of a spiritual bent – relations between males are equally unacceptable by heavenly laws, despite the resulting lack of offspring."

"I know."

"Good. So don't imagine that God will play favourites here. Your devil will be punished, and so will you. Consider this separation – his imprisonment in solitude, and your living without him – as the start of it."

"I didn't know that devils acted like prophets of God, delivering messages of crime and punishment," Ciel remarks evenly.

"You'd be surprised," Azazel grins. With a flash of his bright green eyes, he spreads his glossy black wings and disappears into the air.

"You needn't listen to him," Carsten states gruffly. "No devil acts on behalf of God. He is speculating as much as any of us could."

"He isn't far off the mark, though, is he?"

"Maybe not, but not all wicked deeds are permanently branded for condemnation," comes Agni's voice from a little way off.

Ciel turns to see his Brahmin friend, with Jarvis, approaching from the direction of the manor.

"How much did you overhear?" Ciel asks.

"Enough," Jarvis replies. "He knew we were here, but he chose to ignore us."

"Everything he said was true," Ciel admits. "I may not like to believe it, but he is right."

"Only to a certain extent," Agni responds. "I don't know if what has happened has anything to do with punishment, but I do know that punishment is a good thing – if it comes in place of utter damnation."

"Are you speaking from experience?" the earl asks.

"Of course. You know my past. I have been open about my history to you. My deeds were evil indeed to have brought about my sentence of death, then Prince Soma spared me. I have spent years repenting. My repentance will never erase the effects of my crimes – the people I killed remain dead, their families remain resentful. My repentance may not be enough to erase the memories that haunt me. Yet I remember how, when we were in that sphere, the devils said you were fair game for them, but never pointed me out. I would have been an obvious target for them, as I have done so much evil in my life – more than you – and I even worship gods other than yours. Yet, none of those devils fingered me as someone they had a right to cut through to get to you. I thus believe that true repentance can cast a person's past in a different light – it cannot erase the facts of what happened, but it can make some measure of forgiveness possible."

"But I don't repent of anything I've done," Ciel declares staunchly. "Not what I did to avenge my enemies' humiliation of my family name, not what I did to keep my household safe and the queen well, not what I did with Sebastian."

"Maybe repentance for you will be something different from what it was for me," Agni suggests. "Or maybe it isn't the right time for you to see things from a different perspective."

"The time will never be right for that," Ciel states. Then he looks at Jarvis, defiantly. "So what would your God have to say about an obstinate soul like me now?"

"I don't know," Jarvis admits. "May we talk for a while, to see if an answer of sorts emerges through that? Mister Agni, Finnian – would you please leave us? Carsten will be here to help us if any other unwelcome visitors arrive, am I right?"

The devil shrugs as if he does not care, but remains where he is, while Agni tells Finnian that it is all right – they can leave Ciel with the vicar. Finny has a small blanket draped over his arm, which he brought with him from the house in case the earl felt the cold. He spreads it on the ground and seats Ciel on it. Then he takes off his own rough gardening jacket and lays it on the ground too for Jarvis to sit on.

As Agni and Finny walk away, Ciel asks: "Well? Shall we talk about the repentance I won't be going through?"

"No," the vicar replies. "Because I know you are not ready for it. I hope God forgives me for saying this, but having seen how you and Sebastian fought for each other, I shall assume that when he returns, you and he will go right back to where you left off. So no, we shall not be talking about repentance. Instead, I am going to talk to you about Orpheus."

"Orpheus? Of Greek myth?"

"Yes. Orpheus of Greek myth. I would have said 'myth' without a doubt only a fortnight ago, but having seen what I saw in that sphere, I wonder if what we call myth may not have been fact after all."

"What do you want to tell me about Orpheus?"

"I think you know, my lord. You have studied Greek mythology better than I have. Sebastian gave you an excellent education in the four years he was with you, and you must have been well taught by your parents and tutors in your early childhood."

"I suppose you're going to tell me about his visit to Hades."

"Of course I am. I think you know what I intend to communicate through that story."

"You will tell me that I will harm Sebastian by trying to see him before the time is right, as Orpheus condemned Eurydice to Hades forever by turning to look at her prematurely."

"You know the theory, but you do not believe it will happen."

"No."

"But what if there is a possibility that your breaking into that world could cause Sebastian's powers to become unstable? What if your gaining access to him hastens his destruction?"

"That is only a possibility. There is an equal possibility that he is already well, and ought to be released at once."

"Is that a chance you want to take?"

"It is a chance I believe he would take."

"Not if _your_ safety were at risk."

"Because I am a fragile mortal with no talent other than for getting kidnapped – that's what he always tells me," Ciel mutters. "He wouldn't risk damaging me. But he's a strong demon – he's powerful – he'll be fine–"

"He is as fragile as you are now," Jarvis tells him.

"No he's not... he's Sebastian. He..."

"He is at this time as delicate as you. He was almost condemned to slavery by Ambrose's magic, remember? He is not invulnerable. This moment, he is exceptionally vulnerable. Would you risk his well-being for the pure impatience you feel to look upon him? Would you make the same mistake as Orpheus, and gaze upon your loved one too soon?"

"I..."

"Would you risk it, my lord, if there was even a small chance that you would destroy Sebastian?"

Ciel is silent for several minutes. At last, he answers softly: "No."

"It is good for you to come out here from time to time to feel closer to him," Jarvis says. "But will you promise yourself that you will stop trying to see him before the time is right?"

Ciel is silent again for many minutes, at the end of which he says: "I would like to be alone here for a while."

"My lord..."

"I won't do anything stupid. Just let me alone for a while. You or Finny can come back out to get me soon."

Jarvis looks into his eyes, sees a different kind of determination there, and nods. He gets up and walks far away enough to give Ciel privacy, while still keeping him within view. Carsten simply strides off.

Alone in the forest, at the very spot where he had opened a doorway into the world where Sebastian battled armies for his sake, Ciel stands shakily and reaches out the way he did when he first sliced open an entrance with Ambrose's magic and his fingertips. He feels nothing now – no form of magical resistance to tell him that he might be able to cut some invisible plane the way he did before. No sense of a point of access to Sebastian's prison.

Yet, he knows it is there before him. So near, but so impossible to reach.

He steps forward, knowing that if he could open a doorway, he would be inside the sphere now. He walks on slowly, visualising that space in his mind, until he gauges that he has reached the spot where he last kissed Sebastian. He sits on the forest floor, closes his eyes, reaches a hand out to where his lover might be, and imagines his demon's hair and skin under his fingertips.

"I'm not giving up on you," he whispers. "Don't you dare give up on me while you're in there."

Still with closed eyes, he pictures trees springing up around Sebastian in that barren space, grass growing under him, hills in the distance, cradling a pool of water that will always remain fresh. Stars in a twilight sky. Gentle warmth emanating from the very walls of that sphere. He doesn't know if he has any power over this space that belongs to Sebastian, but Ambrose once believed he had created a vast forest in the shadow of the spell, so maybe he can make a better kind of world for Sebastian now.

"I can't see you," he says quietly. "Not if it means I might upset your healing, or make your powers unstable. I don't know if it is divine punishment or not, but if we are intended to be apart for a time so you can heal properly and lead the fullest immortal life you were meant to, then it must be so."

He doesn't want to cry. He never was the sort to weep. But he is looking at Sebastian in his mind through a wave of tears as he whispers the blessings he wants to give his devil for now – until they can meet again: "I hope to give you a good place to rest in while you heal. I hope those trees are growing, and the grass is soft, and the water pleasing. You always put me to bed so carefully – how little I can do for you in return... I don't even know if it's working... if I'm doing it right..."

His tears are falling, striking the dead leaves on the forest floor.

"Rest well, Sebastian. Rest all you must, then come back to me."

He presses the fingers of his right hand to his lips, and puts his hand out to give that kiss to the demon he cannot touch. He holds his hand out for as long as he can, willing the kiss to cross worlds and arrive on Sebastian's lips. Finally, he gets to his feet and walks slowly back towards the edge of the forest, where Jarvis is waiting patiently to help him back to the house, to his friends, and to the rest of his life, which must go on, somehow.


	35. Duty

The Earl of Phantomhive rides through London in his carriage on the morning after the funeral of Prince Albert Victor, eldest son of the Prince of Wales. He is weighed down by a deep sadness that goes beyond the sympathy he feels for the royal family.

The Princess of Wales is completely grief-stricken by the death of her firstborn child. Those who have seen her say they have never witnessed such despair in her features. The Prince of Wales is outwardly more stoic, but in truth, is equally devastated by his twenty-eight-year-old son's death from pneumonia after falling ill from influenza, which has taken so many lives these past winters. He has expressed his grief in emotional letters to the queen, his other kin and friends, and among the contents of his note to the earl were these lines:

" _Would that I had spoken against Somerset's actions that year, ensuring everything was in the open, to make impossible any conjecture that my son could have been connected with that unfortunate scandal. I thought that with the passage of years, in particular when he should become king after me, he would overcome the shade cast on him and prove himself a worthy ruler of his people. But it is too late; he has died too young. He will never live to erase the whispers that follow his name."_

So much of what happened to Ciel was hastened by that scandal, when the scale of balance tipped, and Sebastian took his burdens and fate upon himself.

_Sebastian..._

Ciel's heart aches from a chaos of emotions. What a shame that the young prince will never have the opportunity to surmount the rumours and criticism that dogged him all his life. So much that he and Sebastian did was linked to the fate of the royal family, and what a blow that family has suffered. They have lost their first hope for the future, and must pin everything on the younger son, George.

_Sebastian, are you well?_

He thinks he will never stop hurting; he _knows_ he will never stop hurting, unless all can be made right by Sebastian's return. Will it, can it, ever be made right? He does not know. But he is learning to live with the pain, the unbearable lack of knowledge of what has become of his demon, and what is sometimes too hard to bear the hope of: that someday, it could all be well.

Two years it is since the day his demon was sealed away from him, perhaps forever. Two years since he has seen him, heard his voice, felt his touch, kissed him, held him... _I miss you._

He occasionally imagines it would be easier to die than to live with this anguish. But his years of wishing his days at an end are over. He will not throw away what Prince Albert Victor could not hold on to. He must live, because Sebastian sacrificed himself to give him a chance at life. He must survive until he can set eyes on him again. As he once said to Soma: _Even the dead know how to keep still._ So he is moving. But while it looks to the world outside that he is moving ahead as he always does, only he and those closest to him know that he is moving only to return again and again to the same place.

_Are you alive?_

He slips his hand into his inner coat pocket just beside his breast and takes out a small, round mirror framed in silver. He has done this out of habit for the last two years. Every time he wonders about Sebastian's fate, he checks his right eye to see that the iris retains that magenta mote – the last physical trace of their contract. It is still there. He reasons that if the mote is in his eye, the contract exists; if the contract exists, Sebastian lives.

He studies the mark and satisfies himself that it is neither faded nor shrinking. When he puts the mirror away, he glances at the empty seat beside him, where his butler used to sit when they rode together. Finny has the reins today, but he, Ciel, is alone inside. Rides between London and the manor always went faster when Sebastian was with him.

He stares out the window at the passing sights. Some shops still have their shutters drawn to mourn the prince's passing. Everyone is in black. As the horses move out of the heart of London, the city scenes give way to fields and trees. Eventually, they enter the thick forest beyond which his manor stands. He sometimes catches glimpses of nymphs and fairies these days; perhaps his use of magic and his time in the sphere changed something about his ability to see these beings. They are shy, harmless to him now, always slipping out of his view perhaps because they know they are not meant to be seen by mortals.

As always, when the carriage approaches the edge of the forest, he tells Finny to stop. The coachman-gardener invariably obeys, in rain, snow or shine, and opens the carriage door for the earl.

Ciel steps down from the vehicle, bending over to keep from knocking his head against the top of the door frame. When he had Sebastian, he was still small enough to walk virtually upright into and out of the carriage. But at sixteen, he is significantly taller than he was. People who knew his parents are starting to remark to him how much he looks like his father, and how his eyes are so like his mother's.

Finny does not need to hand him out of the carriage the way Sebastian used to either, for he is no longer a delicate child. He is physically stronger, well on his way to becoming a fully grown-up man. But one thing has not changed, and that is his yearning for Sebastian. He walks to that spot near the forest's edge which he knows intimately. As always, he tests if a doorway has become viable. Then he walks to that other spot he knows only too well – the one matching the place in the other world where he last held Sebastian in his arms.

"Are you there?" he whispers. "Can you hear me? Do you miss me as much as I miss you?"

A cross between a sniffle and a giggle from deeper inside the forest distracts him. He glances in the direction of the sound and sees a blaze of red behind a tree.

"What are you doing here?" he asks coldly, in response to which question Grelle Sutcliff puts his face round the trunk and glares at him.

"Not to talk to _you_ ," the soul reaper snaps.

Ciel has only ever been able to just tolerate the presence of the scarlet reaper, though he has found him useful on occasion. He has never – and would never – admit it to a soul, but since Grelle cut open his Aunt An right in front of him three years ago, the flame-haired creature has occasionally figured in his nightmares and continues to make him feel slightly ill whenever he sees him. He takes a deep but controlled breath before striding over to the scarlet-garbed being, whom he has not set eyes on since the battle in the sphere.

"Can you open a doorway to the sphere?" he asks Grelle without preamble, noting as he draws closer to the reaper that he is only a few inches shorter than him. Grelle used to tower over him. It fleetingly crosses his mind that he might be able to rest his head on Sebastian's shoulder now if they should stand facing each other, if he goes on tiptoe a little.

"Open a doorway?" Grelle parrots him mockingly. "If I could, wouldn't I have done that by now? Stepped in to thrust my scythe deep into Sebas-chan as the ultimate connection between us? Continued our fight to see which of us would come out _on top_? Or looked in before sealing the door again so I could have him as my private prisoner, all mine, all to myself?"

"When will Spears check on him?" Ciel asks, ignoring the reaper's nonsense. "He said it would be several years before he did that. How many years is 'several'?"

"I have no idea," Grelle groans.

"Why is it taking so long?" asks Ciel. "If Sebastian was so powerful that all those armies had to battle him, why should it need several years for him to stabilise?"

"What an idiot you are," Grelle sighs dramatically. "I thought you were supposed to be cunning, but you are quite a blockhead, it seems. It is precisely because of the immense power he acquired that it will take years. He absorbed the power of worlds. As the one bound to the scale, he should have become the outlet by which the forces of the mortal and immortal worlds would vent their imbalances over time. The severance of the chains restored the universe's natural maintenance of equilibrium, but trapped those forces of balance already inside him, leaving them to build up to breaking point. A lesser immortal – or any mortal, like you – would certainly have been destroyed instantly. But with his strength, there was a chance that he would survive, if the forces could stabilise and the excess imbalances slowly dissipate. But that takes years, silly boy. Years. All for you. How I loathe you."

"The feeling is mutual," Ciel scowls.

He becomes aware of another presence nearby, and turns to see Carsten in the woods, a few feet behind him.

"All right, I'm leaving," Grelle mutters sulkily. "Always here like some creepy wolf stalking through his territory, he is."

The scarlet one vanishes, and Ciel remarks to Carsten: "From the sound of that, you have encountered him here before. Have you?"

"Several times in the last two years."

"You've never told me."

"I never thought it necessary."

"You see him off each time?"

"I discourage him from lingering."

"You haven't discouraged yourself from lingering, though."

"We have discussed this before."

"So we have."

Carsten had haunted the forest in the weeks following Ciel's separation from Sebastian, and has never left. The difference now is that he often spends time in the house too. He has been a regular guest since the day the shield came down about a month after it was first put up, and Ciel's blood ran cold because he thought it meant that Sebastian had died. Upon Agni's revealing that he could no longer sense the shield, Ciel had torn into the forest, face white as a sheet, thinking he had lost his devil forever. But the other demon had appeared and informed him casually that even the best shields of this nature constructed with Ambrose's magic would outlast the absence of their originator only by a few weeks. That it had vanished meant nothing with regard to Sebastian's condition.

It was from that point that Ciel had begun compulsively checking his eye in mirrors. He had placed mirrors in every room of the house, and Finny had accidentally broken a number of them, until Soma at last had the good sense to make the earl a gift of the tiny mirror.

It was also then that Ciel began to invite Carsten into the house. The devil is not officially a member of his household, but unofficially, he has voluntarily assumed the role of a bodyguard and guard dog. Though it is never spoken aloud, it is understood that his respect for Sebastian's defiance of their fellow immortals prompts him to protect them on his behalf. He has even, unasked, kept an eye on Ciel while the earl carried out dangerous underworld duties with support from Baldroy, Mey-Rin and Finny.

"You don't have some secret arrangement with anyone for a share of my soul, do you?" Ciel once questioned Carsten suspiciously.

"No devils have a share in your soul," had been Carsten's terse reply.

Today, in the forest, Ciel inquires of the devil: "Have you seen anyone else come to this place to check on the sphere? William T. Spears, for example?"

"No."

"So he hasn't even looked in."

"I believe more time will be required before he will consider doing that."

"Can you tell at all how Sebastian is? If he is even alive?"

"No. We have discussed this too."

Ciel knows they have. He knows it was foolish of him to ask again, but his longing for Sebastian prompts him to act as he ordinarily would not. With nothing more to say, he returns to Finny and the carriage to complete the ride to the manor.

Baldroy is there to see him out of the carriage, as he always is when he is not working in the kitchen. If he is busy, Tanaka or Mey-Rin will meet the earl in front of the stone staircase. There is no butler in the house; no one wants another. Sebastian has trained them so thoroughly that the manor does not really need one for the time being provided everybody stays sharp.

Baldroy handles the meals, accounts and delegation of other work; Mey-Rin has taken over all the housekeeping duties; Finny acts as valet first, gardener and groom second, and coachman third. Tanaka does his best to help wherever he can, while Ciel sees to business matters all by himself, and the queen's orders with everyone's help. He bathes himself now, and mostly dresses himself too, relying on either Baldroy or Finny only for the finishing touches like pinning on brooches, securing cuffs, and knotting cravats and laces.

Soma and Agni live in London these days, but they have purchased their own carriage, so they visit every week, bringing John Jarvis with them whenever he can spare time from his duties. Agni and Mey-Rin have spoken to the earl and prince about their intention to marry in a year or so. Ciel would not like Mey-Rin to have to live apart from Agni after they wed, so he could be losing a valuable housekeeper, housemaid and sniper. They must start looking for a potential replacement who can be just as loyal.

"Lady Elizabeth arrived twenty minutes ago, Young Master," Baldroy tells the earl as he steps out of the carriage. "She is in the withdrawing room."

"Thank you, Baldroy."

Unlike in their childhood, when Ciel regarded Lizzie's visits with a mixture of resignation and dread, sprinkled liberally with a prickling of irritation, he has found himself, these two years, invariably pleased to see her.

"Ciel!" she calls, putting down the book she is reading and springing to her feet in the withdrawing room once he enters. She may be seventeen, but she still quickens her footsteps like a child when she runs up to him with her brilliant smile. He is, at long last, as tall as she is, with a chance of growing perhaps another inch or so.

They kiss each other on the cheek, and he takes her hand, an act that has come naturally to him for some time, ever since he began to truly understand that she was on his side – always. He squeezes her hand lightly, and she squeezes back.

"I probably shouldn't be wearing this shade of light blue, not as it was the prince's funeral yesterday," she confesses ruefully. "But Father won't know, as he's still in London. Did you see him there?"

"We spoke briefly at the service we attended, but it wasn't the right place to hold a long conversation."

"Of course not."

He appreciates how, for two years, she has not spoken one word of rebuke to him for his intimacy with Sebastian despite her right to do so as his fiancée. On the contrary, she has encouraged him to hope for the best, saying things like: "When Sebastian returns, I will cross swords with him because I said I would, but then I'll ask him if he is willing to accept me in your lives."

It suddenly occurs to him how hard it must be for her. How very hard it must be not to scream at him, or curse Sebastian, but smile cheerfully and look towards a future very different from what she had dreamed it would be.

"Lizzie, don't you hate me?" he asks seriously, taking her other hand.

She drops her eyes and stares at their feet for a while before looking into his face again, shaking her head. "To be honest, in the first months, I vacillated between feeling sorry for you and Sebastian, and being furious with both of you. I would hide how I felt till I was alone in bed at night, then I would cry quietly. I felt so ashamed of myself each time I was angry, because I knew that without Sebastian's sacrifice, you would be dead, and I wouldn't have you at all..."

"You mustn't feel ashamed of being angry," he tells her. "I would be, if I were you."

"No, Ciel. I'm not angry any more. I realised something important one night, after a dream. I dreamt that Sebastian came back and told you that another world had opened up within the one he was in, and there were people in that world, and over the years, he had fallen in love with one of them, but still chose to be with you. You didn't hesitate – you were hurting, but you wanted so much to be with him that you were content just to have him in your life even if it meant knowing part of his heart was somewhere else. I know it was only a dream, but it was perfectly true for _me_. I want to be with you, even if it means that a part of you is with someone else. Neither of us asked for this engagement; and you didn't make me love you; I just do. Besides, I know you love me in your own way – I wouldn't be so bold as to say it if I wasn't sure."

He smiles and touches his forehead to hers, still holding both her hands, and she smiles too and playfully rubs the tip of her nose against his.

"You know I do," he tells her. "I can honestly say that I've never looked at another woman. And before you think I'm trying to evade a vital point, I've never looked at another male either. Sebastian is the only male I would ever consider as a lover, and you the only female. You are the daughter of my father's sister – my flesh, my blood, my betrothed, the one I grew up with. I shall not lie that you are the great passion of my life, but if you want to be my wife, I do want to be your husband."

"You told me once that Sebastian said we ought to marry, so that you can have children."

"He did, but you should not be concerned about what someone else wants for you. You must tell me yourself if you are truly willing to assume a role more important than that of being my wife, which is to be the mother of the next Earl of Phantomhive?"

"Or Countess of Phantomhive, if we have only daughters."

"Yes. Or a Countess of Phantomhive."

"I wouldn't want any other to have that privilege," she whispers.

"I don't deserve your devotion," he replies.

"No other deserves it more," she counters. "Because I've tried as you advised me, but I've never been able to love anyone else, however many balls I've gone to, however many men I've met at parties."

"There's time for many more balls and parties. Maybe someone will touch your heart."

She shakes her head. "It's only ever been you. Besides, Sebastian is right. You will need heirs in time to come. You will need protection from the whispers of society that will certainly come if you never marry. I will give you all that."

He kisses her on the mouth because he wants to. He longs for Sebastian first and most, but she is his intended, courageous and kind of heart, and he loves her second, above all the rest of the world. She tastes of sweet breath and fresh fruit, and they fit together beautifully as cousins often do.

"When do you want to marry me?" he whispers against her lips.

"Mother said that twenty would be a good age, remember?"

"When you are twenty, then, will you be my wife?"

"Yes, with all my heart."

***

Lady Francis has found herself far less worried about her nephew than she had thought she would have to be. Immediately after Sebastian's disappearance, she had imagined herself having to sternly remind Ciel where his duties lay, and what was expected of him as the Earl of Phantomhive.

But to her surprise and relief, the boy had moved on with his life not very long after she had visited him while he lay sick. It seemed that his failure to recover the butler had driven some sense into him, and made him decide that moping was pointless.

She knows her nephew's temperament well; he is as stubborn as his father. He does not give up where there is a chance of success. That he has ceased his attempts to reach Sebastian tells her there must be no hope of succeeding. Without hope, all continued attempts will be mere foolishness and a waste of resources, and Ciel is no fool.

Still, Lady Francis has observed him keenly, and received reports about him from her own sources. His strange attachment to Sebastian had caused her to fear that he was a sodomite like Arthur Somerset, and those other disgraced aristocratic men no one ever speaks of because they have been cast out of English society. But she has been more than pleased to note through her observations and the reports from her social spies that Ciel has no interest whatsoever in men, and is always proper with his own servants. Neither is he dissolute with women, whether virtuous or of ill repute. His activities as the queen's watchdog may be dark, but no one can accuse him of immoral behaviour with either sex.

Whatever happened with Sebastian must have been an aberration, never to be repeated. Besides, he and Lizzie are closer than ever, and seem genuinely fond of each other not only as cousins, but as husband-and-wife to be. The Marchioness of Midford therefore finds herself looking forward to a wedding in a few years' time with a light heart.

***

What if he were to use Percival Ambrose's magic to find ways by which he might bring the passage of years within his body to a standstill? That way, whatever happens, he can still be alive and well when Sebastian returns, whenever that may be.

But he must not use those primitive succubi that Susan Eliot used, and which Ambrose had started out by using. He does enough of what he considers necessary evil as it is, and will never resort to living off innocent lives. He must not do what Ambrose did to Carsten either – he will never enslave anyone, after seeing what Carsten suffered.

Perhaps Carsten might be persuaded to willingly yield some of his powers to him? It is an idea that he turns over in his mind for a while. But one day, he comes across a passage written by Ambrose, which makes him think otherwise.

_It is not good for mortals to live too long. I have lived far, far too long. I am weary, although my form remains young and strong. Human bodies and minds were crafted for new experiences, to learn new things, to taste the new. We are not as immortal beings who are better built to withstand sameness over endless periods of time. Sameness is inevitable. There truly is nothing new under the sun, as Solomon wrote. Whatever new inventions and wonders are made, they only let us do the same things in different ways. Man still loves and hates, speaks and laughs, kills and eats, works and plays, dreams and despairs. We employ different tools from age to age as we do these things, but underneath, it is all the same. We remain the same, and if we live long enough, we will eventually want death more than anything else._

Ciel closes the journal, ponders those words for days, and decides that he will do nothing unnatural to prolong his days.

_But Sebastian, when will you come back? Will I be old and dying by then?_

***

"Ciel!" the Marquess of Midford booms as he wraps his arms in a great bear hug about the still-slender frame of the Earl of Phantomhive. "My dear nephew!"

"Lord Midford," Ciel gasps for breath in the morning room of the marquess' mansion, into which he has just been shown. "It is very good to see you, sir."

"How many times have I told you to call me Uncle Alexis?" the marquess asks, thumping Ciel on the back. "I mean no disrespect to your late parents, but after that _certain_ happy event we are looking forward to, I would be more than delighted if you would regard me as a father, and your aunt as a mother."

"I hardly know how to repay such kindness, my lord... Uncle Alexis."

Behind the marquess, Lizzie's brother Edward gives a little scowl. But it is an improvement on the deep frowns and growls he used to give whenever he saw his cousin in the past. From the very first, when Edward had learnt that his beautiful and beloved baby sister was to become the wife of that scrawny, sickly, weakling son of his mother's brother, he had disliked the boy. But after the Phantomhives were nearly wiped out by their enemies, and Ciel returned as if from the dead, Edward began to view him with greater compassion and some small respect. That respect has grudgingly grown in the past few years, as Ciel has cemented his status as the Earl of Phantomhive, become favoured by the Prince of Wales, and grown in both physical stature and presence. The valuable butler Sebastian disappeared some years ago, but it seems that the remaining members of the earl's household are quite capable of supporting him in all his roles.

"Lord Phantomhive…" Edward greets him with a formal handshake and a hint of a smile. "…Cousin."

"Edward."

"Ciel, you're here!" Aunt Francis exclaims as she enters the room, with Lizzie behind her. "Oh, you look more like your father every time I see you..."

She cups his cheek with her gloved hand and wishes her brother were here to see his son – how well he has turned out, and what a man he is growing into at eighteen.

"Except your eyes, of course," Francis adds. "You've always had your mother's beautiful blue eyes. I cannot express how pleased I am – how pleased we all are – that the clouding you said had marred your eye after you were stolen from the Phantomhive manor finally dispersed four years ago... do you know, if I ever find out who stole you all those years ago, I'll run a sword through them!"

"My dear," the marquess says to his wife. "Speaking of those unhappy events always angers you. Don't upset yourself any more."

"Some things must be said. Ciel knows it is good to remember certain things so that we will never let them happen again," Lady Francis says. "We thought you had perished in the fire, Ciel, and that your body had been burnt to nothing as you were still such a small child. Nonetheless, I questioned those associates of my brother's and father's that remained accessible after the tragedy. No one knew if you could possibly be alive. Some, I suspect, lied to me. But there was no evidence, and no trace of you. I have never forgiven myself for not being able to find you before you freed yourself and returned with Sebastian. If I could have found you sooner, if you could have suffered less..."

"Aunt Francis, please think no more of it," Ciel tells her. "It is over. Everyone who loved me did all they could to help. I will never forget what happened, and I will never let it happen again – not to me, and not to my family, ever again."

He looks at Lizzie as he says that, promising her thus that her children – his children – will never suffer such a fate. Sebastian saw to that when he released Ciel from the chains of a deteriorating spell that would have dragged him to a terrible end. The dangers of the underworld that remain to be dealt with are nothing beyond the ability of Phantomhive to keep in check.

"You'd better not," Edward mutters. "If you're weak, if you fail, if my sister gets hurt, I'll..."

" _Edward!_ " both Lizzie and Aunt Francis chide at the same time, to shut the young man up before he makes any threats he may not be in a position to carry out.

"It is time for elevenses," the marquess declares before an argument breaks out between his son and his wife and daughter. "I can see Andrews signalling urgently that the scones are getting cold. Come. We'll be holding a wedding next year, and we must start laying out the plans."

***

For four years, he has been visiting the forest almost daily, speaking to Sebastian through the invisible, impossible walls that separate them. For four years, he has been wearing the locket-pin Sebastian gave him next to his heart. Four years of curling up into a ball under his covers each night, missing his lover, sometimes slipping downstairs to sleep on the butler's bed, imagining that he will come to him as he did that afternoon when he fell asleep there.

Dreaming of Sebastian, always dreaming of him.

He will marry Lizzie. He and Sebastian previously discussed it as if it would have to happen, and it will. He could not have a better wife. But he will always love Sebastian, and he will never stop going to the forest, or aching for him as he slips into sleep each night.

_Sebastian._

***

By the time Lizzie turns twenty, Ciel and his relations have more or less agreed that the wedding should take place at the end of summer. Lady Francis is in no great hurry to begin with, now that her mind is settled by Ciel's proper conduct.

But something happens in April of that year which brings back the dangers of what she had suspected was happening between Ciel and Sebastian. The playwright Oscar Wilde is being prosecuted for homosexual indecency with Lord Alfred Douglas, son of the Marquess of Queensberry, who first publicly accused Wilde of unacceptable moral conduct.

Aunt Francis is not passionate about the arts, but she has been amused by some of Wilde's witty plays, and is quite upset to see the ugly things written about him in the newspapers, the opprobrium heaped upon him, the way in which people who have absolutely nothing to do with the matter think it their duty to cry shame and behave as if they had been personally insulted by Wilde.

Close to the end of May, when the playwright is convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years of hard labour in prison, Lady Francis feels a sudden dread for Ciel, in case… _just in case…_ The sooner the wedding takes place, the better… or should it not take place at all? Wilde himself has a wife and two young sons, and the fact of their existence did not prevent this catastrophe for him. But Ciel will be wiser. He won't be such a fool, will he?

Constance Wilde will have to leave the country to protect her sons from the dreadful publicity; she will have to change her name, change her sons' names, to try and leave behind the shame her husband has brought upon them all. Lady Francis has a vision of Lizzie in the future, cradling an infant, fleeing abroad under a new name to escape the scandal her husband has brought upon her.

_If that should happen… my God, if that should happen…_

She finds a good time to speak with Elizabeth, as delicately and discreetly as her forthright nature can manage, to ask her if she wishes to proceed with the wedding.

"Elizabeth, Ciel is my nephew and I will always love him. But as your mother, I must assure you that if you believe for any reason at all that you would be happier if you were to be married to someone else, we can halt our plans at once. In any case, there is no hurry. We can wait another year–"

"Mother, I can see myself with no one else. I love only Ciel."

"But does he love only you?"

"He loves me enough, Mother."

"Is that enough for you?"

"Better than not at all."

***

_Sebastian._

***

In the autumn of that year, when Ciel is nineteen, and Lizzie is twenty, they wed before their family and friends. The queen sends generous presents, and the Prince of Wales attends. The prince has persuaded Queen Victoria that her intention to make Ciel a marquess should not be carried out only to make him a stronger watchdog, for ever since his son's death, he has been absolute in his determination never to use Phantomhive for nefarious purposes.

Sobered by the reminder of her grandson's death, the queen refrains from adding to the power – and burden – of the earl. So the royal family sends their gifts and blessings and graces the celebrations, but Ciel will not be weighted with greater responsibilities than he already has. His Royal Highness can at least do that much for the young man whose pale, grim face as a child too old for his years continues to haunt his conscience.

Ciel marries Lizzie with Sebastian's locket pinned to his coat, next to his heart. She knows what the locket is, what it signifies. She knows what she is doing. Still, she is doing it. For that, Ciel loves her a little more.

***

_Sebastian…_


	36. Change

The child walks amongst the trees at the edge of the woods, looking for the one who spends most of his hours here. Somewhere far behind him at the house, his governess is calling, but he won't let her find him yet.

"Carth-ten?" the child lisps. " _Carth_ -ten!"

He walks straight into the devil before he even sees him.

"Why are you out here?" the demon asks.

The dark-haired child cranes his neck to look up out of deep-green eyes at the tall figure in his usual long coat and unbuttoned shirt, and answers simply: "I was looking for you."

"It's not safe for you to come out here on your own."

"But I come out on my own only when I know you're here. It's safe then, isn't it?"

"I shall take you back to the house before your governess storms into the forest."

He lifts the child into his arms and is about to walk towards the house when he senses something nearby. It is – is it... _can it be?_

"Carthten?" the child asks as he feels the powerful body stiffen against him.

"Hold tight. I need to investigate something."

"Are we going to _fly_ again?" the boy asks in a voice that is bright with delight.

"Yes. We're going to fly."

***

"Lord Winterbourn!" cries the young woman who has run out, all flustered, into the garden where the Earl of Phantomhive's favourite sterling silver roses grow. Her upright bearing and plain dress of good quality mark her as a governess, but her features are not those that one would commonly associate with English governesses. For she is dark of complexion, and fabulous gold earrings dangle from her earlobes.

"What's wrong, Sumathi?" the countess' maid, Paula, calls through an open window from the upper floor. It is a warm summer, and half the windows in the manor have been thrown open.

"It's Lord Winterbourn!" the governess replies. "He's run away from his lunch _again!_ I thought he'd be in this garden, but he's not. I tell you, Miss Green, if that child slips into the forest and stumbles upon yet _another_ idiot who imagines he can make some quick money by kidnapping him, we'll have to clean up the mess once more."

"Don't worry, Sumathi," Paula smiles. "I'm sure Mister Wolf is keeping a very sharp eye on him."

"Still, _I'm_ the governess, aren't I?" Sumathi groans, unstrapping the staff from her back – another accoutrement highly atypical of governesses in general – before stomping back into the house so that she can head back out towards the woods facing the front of the manor.

Paula shakes her head and allows herself a small laugh. The last time bungling common criminals imagined they could earn a tidy ransom by abducting the Earl of Phantomhive's eldest child, Sumathi had beaten one of them to a pulp with her staff, while Carsten had... well, she still doesn't know _exactly_ what Carsten did, but she rather suspects he _ate_ the man.

She feels quite the odd one out in this household full of remarkable people, but she is learning from Mey-Rin how to fire a gun as a last resort in an emergency, and she finally hit the bottle-target last week. Mey-Rin visits once a week with Agni and the prince, and still joins the earl, Baldroy and Finnian on their underworld missions. It was on one of these missions five years ago that they had picked up Sumathi, a slip of a teenage girl who had stowed away on a cargo ship from India to England to rescue her little sister. The younger girl – another unwanted female burden in a family already troubled about the prospect of backbreaking dowries for two older daughters – had been sold to a wealthy Indian couple moving to Europe. The couple had passed the child off at Customs as one of their own daughters when in fact they intended to keep her as a slave.

The problem of foreign children being brought into England by their own countrymen and abused as chattel in the privacy of their masters' homes was a source of unhappiness for Queen Victoria. The earl and his little army, augmented by Agni, and Carsten operating under another name, had first worked with Scotland Yard to tighten immigration controls, then swooped in on the suspect houses. The feisty Sumathi, breaking into one of the houses at the same time they did, had impressed the earl enough for him to employ her and her sister, Vidya, as housemaids. They were not only taught useful skills, but also given a proper education by tutors engaged by the earl.

When the first child was born to the earl and countess, Sumathi had become his nanny. Four more years of thorough education later, at the age of eighteen, she was well qualified to become the boy's governess. Vidya had become nanny to the second child, a girl born two years after the first.

The daughter of the earl and countess is an intelligent, quietly cheerful child of two who promises to become as bookish as her father. But the boy – oh, the boy runs them ragged! Paula hopes Carsten has found the child by now. There is something strange in the air today – not _sinisterly_ strange – but strange nonetheless, and the boy shouldn't run off by himself at such times.

***

Sebastian Michaelis steps out of the vast dimension which has been his home and prison for ten years. A quick glance to his right offers a glimpse of the erect back of William T. Spears moments before he disappears into thin air. Another glance to his left shows the manor in the distance, still standing.

He turns back towards the doorway both he and Spears made together, each working from his side to let him out, and seals the slit. He does not want anyone to wander through the opening by mistake or out of sheer curiosity. Then he looks straight ahead of him along the perimeter of the forest, for someone he knows is approaching fast. It is Carsten, as he has judged, bearing a child in his arms – which is somewhat more unexpected.

"Still here, after all this time?" Sebastian asks his fellow-devil with a smile when he swoops down through the trees and stands before him.

"Still so stuffily attired, after so many years locked up alone?" Carsten retorts.

For Sebastian is impeccably garbed as a Phantomhive butler, having used his demonic powers to restore his dressing to what it was when he first faced the armies that had gathered to destroy him.

"Would you expect any less of me?"

"It wouldn't surprise me to learn that you had dressed thus every day you were in there, even with no one to see," Carsten comments.

"Naturally, nothing would surprise you. I, however, am astonished to encounter you with such an unlikely accessory. I don't suppose that is your midday meal there in your arms?"

The boy blinks indignantly at Sebastian and speaks in a childish but confident tone: "I am the Viscount Winterbourn. My father is the Earl of Phantomhive. I am nobody's midday meal."

"Lord Winterbourn," Sebastian bows to him with a smile.

"I suppose you'll be wanting his father," Carsten murmurs.

"Do you know my Papa?" the child asks with interest.

"I know your father very well, Lord Winterbourn. But at this time, I would like to speak with your mother, if I may. I hope that Lady Phantomhive is in today?"

"Lady Phantomhive?" Carsten repeats. "Now I _am_ surprised."

"Mama is in the still room. Papa is in London with Vicar Jarvis, Prince Soma and Agni," the boy tells the tall stranger who does not seem so strange now that he has seen the pin on his coat – it bears the Phantomhive crest.

"I'll speak with Her Ladyship," Carsten says. "I would suggest meeting her in the winter rose garden."

"In summer?"

"It is her favourite garden, as those roses are always at the height of their beauty when it is His Lordship's birthday."

"Of course."

***

A relieved Sumathi takes the child from Carsten and watches as Lady Phantomhive steps out into the winter rose garden to see the tall, handsome man who has just appeared, as if out of nowhere. Sumathi has never seen him in her life, but she has a strong feeling that she knows who he is. After all, he has been described to her in detail, and spoken of a thousand times by everyone in the household.

Sebastian Michaelis.

The demon butler who sacrificed himself to save His Lordship's life, and whom the earl has missed every day for the last ten years.

***

"Sebastian?" Elizabeth breathes his name as she faces him in the winter rose garden, her eyes darting over his features – utterly unchanged from all those years ago.

"My lady," Sebastian bows to the golden-haired beauty, from whose hands and clothes come the aroma of flowers, herbs and fruit.

He straightens up elegantly and gazes at her as she stares back at him. He does not know yet how adversarial that stare is, the proportions in which it combines surprise with hostility or fear. Certainly, there is something of each element in her eyes, but which will triumph over the others?

"You're well again, I see," she says, as composed as one would expect a Countess of Phantomhive to be.

"I am, my lady."

"I promised to fight you when you were better."

"I am ready for our duel," he answers. "However, I am here first and foremost to ask you if I have your blessing to return to the Phantomhive household."

"Could I stop you from doing that?" she asks.

"Yes," he replies frankly. "The household belongs to you and my lord now. It is very changed from what it was before. I want to know if you will welcome me into it. If you will not, I understand."

"Sebastian," Elizabeth tells him with a frankness in her voice to match his. "I have both wished for and dreaded your return all these years. I love you for all you did to save Ciel's life, and resent you for having such a great part of his heart. But I always knew that if you survived, this day would come. I'll fight you for Ciel as I promised I would, but I think we both know that the duel will be for form's sake only. You were always going to return to him."

"Only with your blessing," Sebastian reiterates. "His Lordship belongs to you now."

"And also to you," she counters, her green eyes now bright with a wash of tears. "You met my son. Do you know what his name is?"

"He declared boldly to me that he was Viscount Winterbourn, son of the Earl of Phantomhive."

"Ciel has obtained permission from the queen and Prince of Wales to change his family name back to Winterbourn, although the earl's title remains that of Phantomhive. As the Earl of Phantomhive also holds the title of Viscount Winterbourn from the time of Queen Elizabeth, the eldest son of the earl holds that courtesy title. But do you know his _name_ , Sebastian?"

"I have not had the privilege of learning the young viscount's name."

"My son's name is Vincent Alexis Sebastian Winterbourn," Lizzie reveals. "You understand, don't you, that you are honoured alongside both his grandfathers? How could I not welcome you back into the household? As I welcome you back, however, I only have one request."

"What is it, my lady?"

"Please don't take their father away from my children until they are grown," she speaks through a throat that is tightening up with a flood of emotion. "Please don't take my husband away from me yet. Give us another fifteen years at least. I know you want him to yourself, but I am asking that you live here with us so that _he_ can live here with us. Until the children are grown?"

"I've waited ten years in complete solitude with the greatest patience, Lady Elizabeth," Sebastian replies with his gentlest of smiles, which always put her at ease when she was small. "I believe the next fifteen years – if they may be spent in my master's presence – will be nothing I would dream of complaining about."

She nods, her tears flowing, making it very hard for her to speak. He looks deep into her eyes, and says quietly to her: "It is all right for you to hate me, Lady Elizabeth. It truly is."

But she shakes her head hard, biting her lips to choke back her tears so that she can stutter through the lump in her throat: "I – I – really _want_ to hate you, b-but I can't. I can only h-hate myself because I'm so _happy_ to see you again!"

She feels herself to be a little girl once more as she closes what distance is between them to fall into his arms, remembering what it was like to know that she was perfectly safe when she heard his voice and felt him gather her up with the greatest care out of the box buried deep in the ground, out of the earth that would otherwise have been her grave, bearing her back safely to her family and friends.

He holds her gently, reassuringly, until her stifled sobs subside, and she no longer trembles in his grasp.

"Now, my lady, what shall it be – foil, sabre or epee?" he asks good-humouredly, once she recovers her composure.

With a half-laugh and half-sob, she leans back to look into his beautiful face, and answers with the purest of smiles: "Epee, of course. In the recreation room. Now?"

***

The Earl of Phantomhive rides back to his manor after visiting Soma for lunch at his London house, as he had promised he would. It has been a good day filled with excellent conversation, laughter and familiar teasing, with John Jarvis (as full of thought-provoking insights as ever), Soma (who has never outgrown his tendency to be excitable), Agni (optimistic as ever), and Mey-Rin (who no longer blushes furiously at the least provocation now that she is a wife and mother).

But he is really looking forward to reaching home, for he already misses his children and Lizzie after not seeing them all morning and afternoon. He has presents for everyone too – he almost never visits London without buying something for everybody at home.

As the carriage approaches the edge of the forest, he calls out to Finny to stop, as always. Finny knows the routine and is pulling up the horses gently even before the earl taps his walking stick on the ceiling of the conveyance.

Ciel steps down from the carriage and walks with a quickening sense of anticipation towards the place where the doorway once was. His heart always beats a little faster when he approaches this spot, because every occasion brings with it a new hope that maybe today...

Each time, his heart has sped up only to sink with disappointment, for no opening has ever been viable. But today, something feels different in the air. Today, his heart begins to race faster, because he senses the presence of the other world in a manner that he has not in more than ten years. He can _feel_ the barrier between this world and the sphere under his outstretched hand. _There_ – that little resistance... if he can _feel_ it, he can cut it!

With a gasp of excitement mingled with the fear of possibly discovering that Sebastian died ten years ago, the earl immediately drops his walking stick, throws his hat to the ground, and invokes the spell he has committed to heart. For the first time in a decade, he puts his hand out, and a line of light appears as he slices a magical doorway open with his fingertips.

"My lord!" Finny cries behind him, when the gardener sees what is happening. "Does this mean..."

"I don't know, Finnian," Ciel whispers, barely able to get the words out audibly. "Wait out here. I'm going in."

Ciel steps through the doorway he has just made, and enters the vast sphere, which looks completely different from the way it did the last time he was inside. It is no longer stark and bare. There is soft grass beneath his feet, tall, beautiful trees stretching high towards the twilight sky, hills in the distance cradling a pool of water whose freshness he can smell even from here. It is exactly as he had hoped to make it for Sebastian's comfort – a beautiful world to rest in while he healed.

But where is his devil?

"Sebastian?" Ciel calls, darting towards the hills in the distance, feeling himself a child again, lost without his demon. "Sebastian! Where are you?"

Before he gets too far into the sphere, however, he hears Finny through the slit of doorway. The gardener's voice is very faint, as if he is a great distance off, but the earl can tell that he is shouting out loudly and excitedly: "My lord! My lord!"

Ciel stops in his tracks. Even before looking back, he knows what he will see once he faces the doorway. He turns around.

 _Sebastian._

Ciel does not move for a full minute. He is virtually rooted to the spot, heart pounding, eyes glistening, a great lump in his throat, as he takes in the overwhelming vision of Sebastian Michaelis, his demon, guardian, mentor, saviour and lover, standing there just inside the doorway, looking every inch as he remembers him.

Then the earl feels his pounding, light heart grow a shade heavier as it sinks in that Sebastian looks exactly the way he used to, whereas he, Ciel, is so very different from what he was formerly. He is nearly twenty-five years old now, no longer the small boy Sebastian grew attached to; he is not the child the devil desired; he has become so much taller, bigger...

"Young Master?"

Sebastian is directly in front of him, and he is looking up now into that beautiful face he has dreamed about on hundreds of nights. The demon is still taller than him – he will _always_ be taller than him. But he isn't a child any more, and...

"I thought you would be happier to see me," Sebastian smiles gently.

"I can't tell you how happy I am to see you," Ciel replies in a hushed voice, still hardly able to believe that this is truly happening. "But I don't know if you are happy to see me. I am – I'm not what I used to be – I'm not the child you wanted – I'm–"

"You're beautiful," Sebastian whispers, stroking his cheek, electrifying him with his long-awaited touch. "You were beautiful to me when you were a child, you are beautiful to me now, and even after the decades pass and you are an old man of a hundred and one, you will be beautiful to me always."

A tear rolls down Ciel's cheek, then another. Sebastian strips off his gloves and wipes those rivulets away with the tips of his thumbs and fingers, tracing feather-light lines over the face of the young man who stands before him.

Ciel remembers that touch so well. He has yearned for it in ways quite similar to and yet very different from his love for his wife's touch. He raises his own hands to clasp his demon's, and that familiar contact sweeps the years away. It is as if they are standing together again in the passageways of the manor, stealing a quiet moment away from the eyes of the household, the demon cupping the boy's cheek, the boy caressing the backs of those powerful, gentle hands that he knows would never harm him.

He nestles into the devil's arms like a seabird finding an old home to rest in after a long voyage – a home he had thought was lost to him. He discovers that he can now rest his head on Sebastian's shoulder. He nuzzles his neck, seeking the bare skin that rises above the stiff white collar. From the time he was ten till he was almost fourteen, he had never been able to detect his demon's scent; but not long before they had parted, he had tasted him at last. That special connection lingers. He presses his nose and lips deeper into Sebastian's flesh, a puppy intoxicated by the irresistible scent of a guardian it has always safely snuggled into for warmth and protection.

***

 _He is a man now, a husband and father,_ Sebastian understands. _But to me, he will always be impossibly young._

The devil feels himself surrendering to the long-absent sensation of Ciel's arms wrapping tightly around him, drawing him smoothly back into his role as his master's protector, which perhaps he was always meant to be.

The years he spent wracked by the pain of the spell's imbalances threatening to rend him bone from joint, sinew from flesh; the years of solitude when his fears for Ciel's safety out in the world sometimes overwhelmed him; the quieter, calmer years of peace and healing, remembering what little good he had done in his existence, and looking towards the hope of seeing the boy again – all those years resolve and evaporate as he swiftly forgets what was nigh-intolerable and only welcomes what to him is promising and beautiful.

He should ask permission, he thinks. He should tread carefully, test the waters to see if the years have altered his master so that his advances may no longer be as welcome as they were. He should give it some time...

Then Ciel nuzzles his neck, brushes his still-soft, perfectly shaped lips up to his cheek, to the corner of his mouth. Sebastian feels the intriguing friction of the young man's jawline and chin against his face – he has shaved well, but no blade yet known to humankind can render his skin as smooth as it was when he was a child.

Ciel seems to become aware of the slight rasp of his skin against Sebastian's flawless flesh at the same time the demon does, and pulls back at once.

"Sebastian..." he murmurs in an undertone, as if conscious of the depth of his voice compared with what it was when he and his butler last exchanged intimate whispers.

"Young Master?"

"Don't call me that. I'm not your _young_ master any more. I'm not the boy you saved. I'm so altered, while you remain untouched by time. I can't be the child of your memories, of your desires. I'm sorry."

Sebastian looks at him with compassion and understanding, removes his hands from him, and steps back. The demon sees the uncertainty and the passage of years in the earl's face – and the inevitable hurt tempered by resignation that flashes in his eyes for a second as his devil turns and walks away from him, towards the opening in the side of the sphere.

 _Of course you would no longer desire me,_ those blue eyes seem to say. _Of course you would choose to walk away from me – how much time you have already wasted on a mortal who could not remain unchanged after ten years..._

Sebastian steps into the slit of doorway, half in and half out, as if holding it open for Ciel to leave. The earl is about to walk over in order to exit with as much courage and dignity as he can summon, when he hears Sebastian say: "Finnian, would you please drive the carriage back to the house and inform Lady Phantomhive in private that His Lordship and I will return to the manor later? Thank you."

The devil slips back inside to face the young man. Ciel has stopped in his tracks, and stares at Sebastian as he seals the doorway with his own demonic magic. The devil locks the point of entry, then strides back over to him, pulls him firmly towards him with one hand on the small of his back and the other behind his head, and presses his lips hard to Ciel's the way he did once in his butler's bedroom, the first night the boy came to him there.

A surprised moan rises in the earl's throat and resonates in his mouth before escaping over his tongue past Sebastian's lips. The demon tastes with pleasure the mortal he has longed for these ten years – the master who will always be desirable and irreplaceable to him, whether he is a child or a young man, an old man or a bodiless soul. He savours his unique sweetness through other scents he detects on him. Beyond the immediate traces of the meals he has eaten this day, the taste of his wife's kisses in his mouth, the hints of his children on his lips from the pecks on the forehead and cheek he gave them this morning, the pleasing texture of his fine stubble, Sebastian drinks in the unforgettable essence of Ciel Phantomhive... Ciel Winterbourn... his Ciel... his only heaven.

They break the kiss only to merge more closely as Sebastian holds the earl tightly, as he did ten years ago in this very sphere, feeling the satisfying strength of Ciel's returning embrace.

"Didn't you believe me when I told you that you would always be beautiful to me, no matter what should change in and around you?" Sebastian asks beside Ciel's ear, one dark-nailed hand caressing the earl's soft-black hair, another tracing his spine.

"When have I ever believed _everything_ you say?" Ciel murmurs through fresh tears, the relief and contentment in his voice belying the mere words. "You and your strategic omissions – making me believe nothing was wrong when you were going to _war_ for me. I still haven't smacked you about the head for _that_."

"No more omissions now; no more deceiving you to shield you; nothing but the truth, my darling," Sebastian declares softly.

Ciel remembers the first and only time before this that Sebastian had called him that – a second before he was torn from his arms – and he holds his devil tighter. "Never leave me again, Sebastian."

"Never."

"Promise."

"I promise. I will be with you to the end. This time, I give you no hidden meanings in that vow."

"I could almost kill you for what you did – you had no right to come so close to dying for me."

"And I could spank you for using Ambrose's magic to enter the sphere in the middle of a battle that could have killed you."

"I'm too old to be spanked," Ciel retorts with a sniffle, nibbling Sebastian's ear.

"Not to me," comes the answer, with a pinch to his bottom and a kiss placed on the side of his neck.

"Don't you dare," the earl warns, flicking the tip of his tongue into that perfectly shaped ear.

"I would dare do anything to drive home the point that you are more than precious to me, and you are never to put yourself in harm's way for me again."

"Oh, shut up," Ciel murmurs, repositioning his upper body to claim Sebastian's lips, both seizing the kiss he wants and submitting to it all at once. He starts to undo Sebastian's tie as their tongues clash, and to unbutton his waistcoat. Tearing his mouth away from his demon's, he says: "I'll talk to Lizzie about your return to the household... I'll win her over–"

"Already done, my lord."

"What?"

"Lady Phantomhive and I have already duelled over you – in the recreation room. She is terribly swift and strong."

Ciel forgets about undressing Sebastian for a moment and stares at him. "Good God – you fought Lizzie?"

"I did."

"And you don't have a hole right through you?"

"Indeed, I came quite close to acquiring one."

"Is Lizzie hurt?" Ciel gasps. "Are _you_ hurt?"

"Neither of us is injured."

"Then who won?"

"We both did," Sebastian says, stopping the flow of questions from Ciel with another passionate kiss, one he does not break off from until their coats hit the grass, followed quickly by their ties.

As the devil unbuttons Ciel's waistcoat, he strokes the locket the earl has pinned to it, the one with their hair intertwined inside it. Lifting his lips off Ciel's at last, Sebastian declares to him: "At this very spot ten years ago, I let you be torn from my arms. At this same place, I shall begin the journey of holding you for as long as I am given."

"I shall never let you go again," Ciel promises in return as Sebastian undresses him to explore the body that is both familiar and new, while he disrobes the demon to rediscover the body he remembers well.

Still somewhat embarrassed by how changed his physique is, the young man wants to examine the devil more than he wishes to be examined by him, and Sebastian has to wrestle him to the ground. The devil is pleased to test the strength of the one he spared, the one he saved, to see how he has grown. He has turned out very fine indeed, but no mortal is his match for plain strength, and Sebastian easily holds him down until at last he looks boldly back at him. Then he releases his arms and allows him to do what he will.

"You're perfect," Ciel whispers, tracing a line down his body with his fingertips. "There's not a scar on you."

"Time may not tell on me, but I treasure every mark on your flesh because it is _yours_ ," Sebastian responds, finding and caressing a tiny scar on the earl's chin. "What caused this?"

"A shaving accident," Ciel replies.

"Baldroy, or Finnian?"

"Baldroy. His first and only such mistake, to be fair to him."

"Wielding the shaving blade like a kitchen knife, no doubt," Sebastian remarks dryly. "I shall shave you from now on." He presses a kiss to the minuscule scar, then moves down to another, even tinier mark on Ciel's throat.

"And this?"

"Is there even a mark there?" Ciel asks with a murmur of pleasure as the devil's lips brush his neck. "I can't see anything there when I look in the mirror, but it's where I pricked myself quite badly one day when I tried to pin a brooch on my cravat."

"I shall do that for you from now on also," Sebastian tells him, drawing another smooth, low sound from him as he kisses his way down his throat to his left shoulder, where he finds the traces of where Azazel sank his claws into his flesh. "Did his claws hurt you much, here?"

"I was in too much despair at being separated from you to take any note of whether it hurt."

"Forgive me for having to be apart from you all these years, Young Master. What is this long scar on your chest?"

The devil's fingers examine the thin white mark on the earl's body. "Underworld work. Knife fight. Finnian saved my life by punching the assailant into the next alley."

Ciel's breathing quickens as Sebastian kisses the scar on his chest before taking his left nipple between his lips and caressing it with his tongue.

Sebastian's fingers find another mark, slightly raised, on the earl's belly, and asks as he transfers his mouth from the left nipple to the right: "And this here over your stomach?"

While the demon's tongue circles the hardening nub on the right side of his chest, Ciel moans: "I was grazed by a bullet... gang of child smugglers... near the docks... Carsten saved me then..."

Ciel gasps as Sebastian's mouth finds that mark on his belly, while his fingertips search out another, much shallower and smaller scar high on his right hip. "What about this?"

"That was from fencing with Lizzie with unguarded blades. It bled only a little, but she cried a sea of tears when she saw she had cut me..."

Sebastian kisses that spot also, before letting the fingers of his right hand come to rest between Ciel's legs: "I trust I shall find no scars _here_?"

Ciel gasps and arches his back as his demon strokes his stiffening cock rising out of its nest of dark pubic hair and cups his scrotal sac, then takes him into his mouth.

"Ahh... _Sebastian_..." he breathes. The memories return, the many intimate moments they shared in his room, in the butler's room, the secret encounters along corridors... he is so physically changed now, yet it is the same... all still the same...

Sebastian pleasures and savours the young man wholeheartedly, taking delight in every whimper, every ragged breath, acquainting and reacquainting himself with the maturity of the boy he has missed every day for ten years. He is grown up now, more disciplined, easily passing the point at which his childish body would have peaked a decade ago, but in another sense, nothing has altered. It is still Ciel here under him, Ciel's delicious scent filling his nose, Ciel's familiar moans entering his ears, his boy, his master, his darling... Ciel climaxes with an unashamed cry, clutching Sebastian's hair as he strains into that devilishly clever mouth, firing his seed down that beautiful throat which once would have led him into hell when he was thirteen, but has since then tried to direct him only to heaven.

"Sebastian..." he murmurs dreamily as his demon gathers his sated body into his arms and holds him protectively there on the forest floor.

"Thank you for the soft grass you sent me, Young Master," Sebastian whispers to him. "I am pleased to be able to share it with you now."

"Did I really do all this?" Ciel mumbles sleepily.

"I think you did. I felt you making this world beautiful for me. Thank you for the trees, and the hills, and the pool, and for helping me to keep it all perfect with your wishes and your magic over the years."

"I wanted to send you some cats... but I knew you wouldn't want to risk killing them if you... didn't make it. I'm so thankful that you're here with me now."

"Thank you for visiting me almost every day, and sending me your kisses, and _not_ sending cats."

"Could you hear me? Could you feel the touches I wanted to give you?"

"Not physically, but I _sensed_ them. I sensed your sadness also, and I wished to make things better for you, but I could not. I will not miss a single opportunity from now to make everything better for you."

"You'll spoil me."

"Haven't I always?"

"Well, there were times you could have done better, you _bastard_ ," Ciel teases.

"It was all to make you the man you have become, _brat_ ," Sebastian huffs.

Ciel reaches up and pulls the devil down for another penetrating kiss, then rouses himself, presses Sebastian to the grass, and lies atop him.

"Young Master?" Sebastian murmurs interestedly.

"My turn to spoil _you_ now."

Their lips lock once more, tasting deeply of each other, eagerly pressing on but somehow also taking their time with one another, making up for what was lost, enjoying this private space which was once an arena of war and a solitary prison, but is now _their_ sphere, _their_ world.

Not paradise exactly, but close. Very close.


	37. Together

Sebastian lies back in the grass, entirely unselfconscious of his nakedness as only a non-human can be. He gazes up at Ciel who kneels astride his hips, looking down at the perfection of his devil.

Ciel has already "spoilt" him once, bringing him to a deeply satisfying climax with his mouth, swallowing every drop of his seed. But the young man wants more now that there has been give and take both ways.

At Ciel's request, Sebastian has assumed his demonic form. It is so different from his handsome butler's guise, the garnet cat-eyes, gleaming fangs and jasper claws accenting his wild, animalistic nature. This body no more requires clothing to enhance its beauty than a leopard would need a frock coat. He has use for only one garment at present – his butler's coat, folded up beneath his head as a pillow.

"Azazel said the bodies and spiritual natures of devils were altered when they were cast out of heaven, but I see only perfection," Ciel murmurs, running his fingertips down Sebastian's chest and sides.

"When did he say that?" Sebastian asks.

"Some days after we parted," Ciel reveals. "He came here to tell me that the devils of hell had been informed that I was not to be harmed by them, and neither were you. I still don't know what was behind that announcement."

"How interesting."

"Do you know anything about it? Carsten never has a word to say on the matter."

"No, Young Master, but I shall try to find out when I have a moment to spare from you. I have not had enough of you yet." He runs his sharp claws along Ciel's left thigh, careful not to break the skin, sending a shiver through the earl.

Ciel leans down and claims a kiss from him, a move that presses his crotch into Sebastian's. Well-recovered from his earlier exertions, he feels himself responding to the touch of Sebastian's erect member – as with years ago, the devil needs no rest to regain strength or keenness after each peak. Already, he is offering Ciel the pressure of his hardness and his sleek hips between his thighs, wanting him, needing him.

The earl shifts a few inches down Sebastian's body, temporarily depriving that hungry portion of the demon's anatomy of direct contact with him. Sebastian's hips are now under Ciel's raised belly, while the earl attacks his throat with his mouth. The devil purrs like a very large cat and bares his neck to the young man straddling him, lapping up the attention he has missed for a decade. His clawed hands stretch forth and explore the human male's body all over again, discovering it anew. That once-thin, overly fragile torso is still slender but invitingly shaped with lean muscle and firm flesh. His back is no longer bony but sculpted. The painfully narrow loins of childhood and adolescence have filled out into temptingly firm hindquarters that Sebastian has a tantalising glimpse of over Ciel's shoulders from where he lies.

Ciel skims past the nipple-like features on Sebastian's chest which are neater and smoother than those adorning his butler's form. He fleetingly wonders what their purpose is on demons... then again, human men's nipples appear to serve no particular objective either... and if devils are sometimes able to father mortals like Merlin, then perhaps female devils – if there are any – may suckle their children...?

His original intention in skimming downwards was to tease the demon's navel a little, only to make it to his taut abdomen before realising that in his devilish body, Sebastian has _no_ navel. He possesses one when he masquerades as a man, but it is absent from this body – this beautiful, remarkable structure of immortal bone, sinew, flesh and skin.

Sebastian humours his less-than-expert explorations by refraining from chuckling as the earl returns to his chest and nips rather hard at one of the two pink nubs there.

"Not what you expected, is it, this physique of mine?" the devil asks lightly, enjoying the touch of annoyance that comes through in that sharp nip.

"No," Ciel admits, raising his head to look into Sebastian's smiling face, and finds it hard to look away again, for it is a compelling mien, the exposed, uneven fangs both ugly and perfect all at once.

Sebastian himself cannot look away from the young man. His face is very like that depicted in the portraits of his father, Vincent. Despite that, he sees traces of the child he knew. The blue eyes, though no longer as proportionately enormous, are unmistakably Ciel's, still long-lashed, and the shade of a deep forest reflected in a crystal-blue sea. The juvenile roundness and softness are refined into the clean lines of his high-bred features, but Sebastian recognises what they were, what they are, and what they will become.

High-bred the earl may be, but it is not beneath him at this time to slick the palm and fingers of his hand with his tongue like a dog grooming his paw, before he reaches down along his lover's body.

"It's certainly not what I expected – every time I saw you in your natural form in the past, you had some sort of clothing on," Ciel murmurs. His voice is rich, not too deep, and most pleasing to the ear – the kind of voice made to whisper words of torment, words of love. "But I do like the beauty and strangeness of what is before me."

He glides down that lithe body again and slips the devil's smooth, almost-creaseless penis into his mouth to moisten it. To his satisfaction, that simple act draws a purring moan from Sebastian and an upward push of his catlike hips. He samples the curiously addictive taste of the hard flesh – a slight variation from the scent of the butler's form – laving it with his tongue, extracting more purrs before he slides the length of it out of his mouth and circles it firmly with his right hand.

Yes, he can hold his demon's prick perfectly well now that he is grown – no more weak grasping by a childish hand that could barely enclose its girth properly. With a grin, he retains his hold of the erect appendage while sliding back up alongside him. Resting his left elbow on the grass and propping up his own head with his hand, Ciel looks into Sebastian's intriguing face and studies its expression of interest tinged with annoyance at the removal of his warm mouth and attentive tongue from his flesh. He calculates that the demon is still in a very indulgent mood, and decides to take full advantage of it.

Giving the rock-hard member grasped in his right hand a luxurious upward stroke followed by a firm downstroke, Ciel speaks in a manner both businesslike and playful: "Now that you're perfectly well again, and we are back together, I will ask you if it wasn't terribly disobedient of you to do what you did to get locked up here for ten years, away from me?"

His right hand stills its rhythmic motion, and instead tightens its grip on the shaft, squeezing it to a punishing degree, beyond what a human male could comfortably tolerate. It does not hurt Sebastian, but those red eyes begin to narrow. If he had a cat's tail attached to his perfect bottom, doubtless it would be lashing in warning by now.

Still, Ciel gauges that as their reunion is so fresh after a ten-year separation, he can chance a few more liberties with the demon.

"Well, Sebastian?" the earl demands, pairing a smile on his lips with a gleam in his deep-blue eyes as his right thumb teases the weeping slit at the tip of the devil's prick. "I promised years ago that I would beat the sense back into your head and drag you back to the manor. But the way things happened, I did not enjoy that opportunity. So I think it's time I carried out my promise."

"I did say once that you could hit me all you pleased once you recovered from the injuries inflicted by Ambrose's magical spear, but you never struck me again in any serious way," Sebastian mutters, gritting his fangs as Ciel's hand continues to tease and torment without delivering any satisfaction.

"Hmm... hitting you is much too easy. It would be like a sparrow beating its wings against an elephant. I've thought of something better. Like _this_ , for instance."

By "this", he means nothing, for he opens the fingers of his right hand and rests his palm high on Sebastian's thigh, making no further move to deal with the rampant organ that throbs furiously with nothing to enclose it.

"Young Master..." the devil says pleasantly. A shade _too_ pleasantly.

"Yes, Sebastian?" Ciel asks coolly.

"Is this how I taught you to interact with your lovers?"

"Not at all," Ciel replies brightly. "But you really were deceitful ten years ago, and I think some personal torment from me is in order."

"You do not think that I've suffered more than enough in here?"

"I _know_ you suffered greatly," the young man's tone suddenly turns serious. "I _never_ wanted you to suffer any of it. Which is why, after the relief of finding you well again, I now have the space to be _furious_ with you."

"Of course you do," Sebastian agrees reasonably. "But if you do not resume what you were doing before you decided to enforce a ten-year-old decree of punishment, I shall be obliged to continue what you started, _without_ your participation."

"Hogwash," Ciel retorts confidently, using one of those fresh, new words that is gradually creeping into informal speech in England. "For all I know, you've been doing it alone every day you were in here. But you want _me_ to do it, don't you?"

"You've grown more playful despite your years," Sebastian observes levelly.

"Thanks to _you_ ," the earl replies. "Thanks to everything you gave me – a chance to lead a full life, to be happy, to have a family of my own again after losing my mother and father, and every reason to live beyond my revenge. When I said I was not the child you knew, I meant it in more ways than one. I'm not only older, but I've learnt to be happy. I've remembered how to be playful again, like I was before my parents were murdered. How to be both firm and loving with my children, the way my mother and father were with me for my good. So this deeply contented man asks you if you will accept him the way he is; and this firm parent asks if you will admit to having deceived your master ten years ago; and this mischievous adult tells you that if you will admit to having been at least partially in the wrong a decade ago, he will finish what he started."

As the earl's long, elegant fingers drum lightly on his thigh, the devil huffs: "I think you are a far more dangerous master than you used to be, my not-so-little one."

" _And,_ Sebastian?"

"And this demon butler admits that he did deceive his young master ten years ago – though it was for the purpose of saving his life, as well he knows."

"And?"

"And this devil more than willingly accepts all that you have grown into, and all that you will be in time to come."

Ciel lowers his head and kisses the demon while his right hand returns to stroking his cock, doing it beautifully this time, bringing his mouth back to the tip of his erection to warm and moisten it further, then working rhythmically with only his hand again while he studies Sebastian's face because he wants to both see and feel his pleasure, to watch his eyes narrow with an arousal that has escalated into sensual excitement, to taste the devilishly spicy gasps that escape past the fangs and pale lips.

Unlike mortals, who instinctively hide their faces at the point of sexual climax in the deep-rooted shame of the original fall of humankind, devils have never repented of their own fall. They know none of the shame that marks Adam's race. So Sebastian does not turn his face away as he peaks under Ciel's hand, but throws his head back and cries out throatily, without fear, without restraint, with far more abandon than he did when he came in Ciel's mouth earlier in his butler's guise.

The untamed, animal-like openness of it moves and startles Ciel, who catches his breath and watches his demon's face and arching body intently as his scalding seed shoots out and spurts onto them both, the last of it flowing over the earl's fingers. As he caresses Sebastian's black hair with his left hand and tapers off his strokes with his right, he imagines his devil curling up contentedly with him for a while before they bathe in the pool cradled by the hills.

But he is suddenly reminded of the demon's sheer stamina – and how far he tested his patience mere minutes ago – when Sebastian does not even pause to rest, but springs on him and mounts him with a grin. In the very same instant, the devil assumes his human butler's form. Ciel finds himself staring up in surprise at the handsome face which mysteriously manages to look even more animal-like than the demonic countenance in its place a moment ago.

"Sebastian...?" the young man begins, trying his strength against the one who pins him to the grass, and finding that he cannot shift him so much as a fraction of an inch.

"Ah, Young Master," the butler croons dangerously. "I'll admit that I deceived you ten years ago by making you think nothing was wrong, and I'll admit that I desire you no matter what you have become. But did you think I would let you get away with tormenting me so inconsiderately and interrupting my pleasure after I have patiently waited for you these ten years?"

Ciel's eyes widen, and he struggles against Sebastian again, to no avail. The devil's indulgent mood has run out, and it is time for Ciel to face the consequences like a man. Indeed, there will be no more holding back on the demon's part, now that his master is no longer a child.

Ciel tests his strength against the devil's once more, and fails utterly to make even an excuse of an impression on the immortal body on all fours above him, steely ankles immobilising his shins, black-nailed hands imprisoning his wrists, knees lightly but firmly planted on his thighs, the beautiful face all the while contemplating him with an expression of absolute serenity.

"Really, Young Master," Sebastian purrs tolerantly. "Physically speaking, you are just as helpless as you were before."

"Is that truly what you want to say to me at this point?" Ciel asks logically.

"What point might that be, my lord?" asks the devil evenly.

"The point at which I invite you to do what you earned the right to do a long time ago."

"Do you want it?" Sebastian asks.

"Is that material?" Ciel questions. "It is your right."

"Despite my nature, my lord, it is not a right I would enjoy if you did not also want it."

Sebastian has him at his mercy. He could do whatever he pleases to him, with his terrible strength and devilish nature – and the right to possess the one for whom he has sacrificed so much. But Ciel looks deep into his eyes and sees in them the wish to find a mirror of his urges in his mortal master.

"I want to be everything to you that you would want me to be," he says, without doubt or fear in his voice.

No hesitation, no halting steps. What must be, must be, and what is desired shall be pursued. It is the way he has always been with his devil, from the second their original contract was forged. Sebastian sees all over again the single-minded child in the cage, the calm boy coldly plummeting off the cliff, the impulsive adolescent flinging himself in front of a magical lance, the young lover who has never forgotten him for a day of their separation.

He has not changed as much as he thinks.

Sebastian smiles and pushes two fingers into the earl's mouth. In doing so, he releases Ciel's left arm, and the young man grasps the devil's wrist as he licks the black-nailed fingers attentively, sensuously. Sebastian eases the pair of long digits out of his mouth when he judges them slick enough. They draw a thread of saliva with them which breaks and falls to Ciel's chin, from where Sebastian licks it off even as he reaches down and inserts the tip of one finger into him. No longer holding his master to the ground, the devil shifts fluidly, perfectly balanced, till he has one knee between Ciel's thighs and the other outside his right leg.

Resting his left hand lightly on the earl's hip, Sebastian slips his finger into him another notch, observing as he does: "You have taken no other male lovers."

"No." Ciel breathes evenly, not fighting the entry of the devil's middle finger despite the mild discomfort.

"I am certain you could have. If you were careful not to be caught, you could have had any number of lovers."

"Does anything in your knowledge of me suggest that I would do such a thing while missing you, and married to Lizzie?" Ciel asks.

"A good deal can change in ten years."

"I told Lizzie before we married that she would be my only female lover, and you my only male lover, and I have never broken my word," Ciel growls, feeling Sebastian's finger work its way deeper into him. "That will never change."

"Such an idealistic young creature," Sebastian murmurs, slowly slipping his finger almost all the way out, but not completely, easing back in again with two fingers this time.

"Is it idealistic?" Ciel grunts out tightly from the increased pressure as the second digit is introduced. "I thought I was only following my true desires rather than the cheap wants of the world."

"Am I one of your true desires, then?"

"You know you are," Ciel gasps as both fingers press a little further into him. "Damn it all, Sebastian – you _know_... ahhh!" He cries out at the brushing of those probing digits against that delicate, secret place inside him no one else has ever touched. He remembers being in the downstairs bedroom, biting down on his butler's shoulder to stifle his cries, while Baldroy turned the door handle from outside...

"Yes, Young Master, I know," Sebastian affirms, leaning forward and down to bring his face closer to Ciel's. "I know, but I like to hear such heartfelt declarations from you. Consider it one of my foolish indulgences. It pleases me immensely to hear such assurances from you, _because I know you mean every word_."

He drops his seductive voice to an intimate whisper while he caresses, feather-light, the sweet spot within, delighting in the sight, feel and sound of his mortal lover opening up to him, accepting every little pleasure he offers, as eager for it as for his best sweets.

Ciel's slim body arcs and tenses from his head to his cock, down to his toes. His nether orifice tightens around Sebastian's hand as he comes violently, crying out, wanting to bury his face in something, anything. But he is restrained by Sebastian's left arm holding him down, holding him open, so that the devil can drink in every second of his peak – the visual, aural and tactile pleasure of it – and every ebb and softening of his body as he sinks into the relaxation that comes in its wake.

To the devil, those moments of relaxation are the perfect time to slink between his parted thighs, slip his fingers out while leaving all the devilish lubricant within, and carefully push the very tip of his cock inside him.

"Sebastian," Ciel pants in surprise, near-breathless, as his demon lover joins his body to his just as he thinks they are enjoying a lull in their lovemaking.

The devil lowers himself to his elbows, careful not to hurt the human beneath him. He kisses Ciel's belly through the dashes of cum dotting it, then the gently rippled flat of his torso above his navel, slowly, slowly pressing in. Ciel's legs wrap around his waist as he eases out a little, then in again, a bit further. Warm lips find the earl's throat as the feline body hovers over the one below, waiting till he is ready, till he gradually accommodates him.

He would not trade this young man for any other.

"Say it to me again," Sebastian prompts. "Say to me that you desire me because you do, and not only because I have earned the right to claim you as my own after saving you from destruction."

"I desire you..." Ciel breathes. "I want... _ahhh_... I want _you_... Sebastian!"

The demon is slowly thrusting in and out of Ciel now, sending him into a frenzy as with a diabolical cleverness he does things inside him that no human would be capable of delivering. He pauses to give the young man some respite, taking the opportunity to ask: "Would you want me still if we should face war and danger and condemnation again as we did in this very place ten years ago?"

Panting hard during this pause in the devil's thrusting, Ciel slips his arms about his demon lover's neck and whispers: "If there were war and danger, first I would see my family to safety. But after that, I would move worlds to be with you. What we are doing here – it is damned by heaven and the laws of the living – but I would brave all the condemnation of heaven and earth, without regret, to return to you."

Sebastian pushes deep into him there and then, making him cry out with a sweet mixture of pleasure and pain as he takes him fully. He clutches his master to his breast, nuzzling his soft hair and letting him bury his face in his embrace so his heated breath caresses his flesh. They wrap tightly about each other, flesh to flesh, heart to heart, each feeling how the other trembles – not with fear, but with desire and excitement and conviction as they climax ferociously, locked together as one at the heart of a universe of their own making.

***

Later that day, Sebastian enters the Phantomhive manor for the first time in a decade, a step behind his master. A very much older, very weak Tanaka insists on hobbling out of bed to welcome and thank the butler who almost died to save Lord Phantomhive. Finnian briefly encountered him in the forest, but Baldroy has not set eyes on him till now. The chef looks very little different from ten years ago, except that Lady Phantomhive seems to have cured him of his perpetual habit of chewing on a cigarette. He has been more or less in charge of running the household all this time, and it is strange for him to come face to face again with the tall devil who once ordered him about.

"Baldroy," Sebastian acknowledges the man.

"Mister Sebastian," he answers gruffly, looking intently at him. The devil – even before he knew he was a devil – always made him slightly nervous, and won his respect a long time ago, even if that respect was sometimes given grudgingly. But this is a new age, and the end of this year will see the beginning of a new century, and he, Baldroy, will not be afraid of Sebastian Michaelis any more.

Firm on that resolution, the man steps forward, catches the imposing, black-clad figure in a great bear hug, and sniffles out as the tears spring to his eyes: "It's _so_ good to see you again!"

That sets Finnian wailing, and Tanaka blinking tears away. Sebastian is just beginning to wonder how long this sentimental absurdity will go on when Lady Phantomhive enters the foyer.

Although everyone here knows what Sebastian and Ciel are to each other, before all these pairs of eyes, the earl and the butler maintain their decorum. Ciel greets Lizzie with a kiss on the mouth, knowing she will not taste Sebastian on his breath or smell him on his skin, for they have bathed thoroughly in the pool cradled by the hills in the sphere, and Sebastian's magical skills have neutralised every physical tell-tale sign of their lovemaking.

Everyone may know, but that does not mean they need to or intend to insult the countess, embarrass the servants, or frighten the children – for Sumathi is just now leading young Vincent into the foyer. The child always tries to be as dignified as befits his position, but when he sees his father, he forgets all his dignity to throw himself happily into his Papa's arms, and to size Sebastian up boldly from the safety of that secure embrace.

"We've had no butler here for years, so I am told," the child says to the devil. "Are you going to be ours?"

"Would you accept me as the Phantomhive butler, Lord Winterbourn?" Sebastian asks.

"Vincent," Ciel tells the four-year-old. "Sebastian was Papa's butler before you were born, but he is now an honoured friend..."

"A friend who would take the deepest delight in serving this household as he always has," Sebastian says smoothly.

"Mama says you saved Papa's life before I was born. I would therefore be motht... _most_ pleased if you would be a part of our household. Mama says you would really be more of a thtew- a _stew_ ard than a butler." He does not go on to add that he also saw Mama fencing fiercely with the tall, dark man in the recreation room earlier today – and he knows that his mother only fences fiercely there with people she trusts. Like Papa, like Grandmother Francis, Grandfather Alexis, Uncle Edward, Agni, Sumathi and Vidya.

"I thank you, Lord Winterbourn," Sebastian bows.

"Papa!" comes another, far more childish cry from the top of the stairs. Vidya descends into the foyer, carrying Vincent's two-year-old sister.

Lizzie takes Vincent from Ciel so that Ciel can lift the little girl out of the nanny's arms and present her to his demon steward and friend. "My daughter, Rachel Francesca."

"Lady Rachel," Sebastian bows again, noting her deep-blue eyes and soft-black hair, a near-perfect copy of her father's.

The child breaks into a gurgling laugh and a smile as pure as her mother's. Without any hesitation, she stretches her little arms out towards Sebastian to pat his face and touch his glossy black hair.

"She likes you," Ciel observes approvingly.

"I can't imagine why," Sebastian comments wryly.

But he indulges the toddler, allowing her to examine his features without the slightest complaint or show of annoyance.

Baldroy grins. Despite his outward coldness – and intimacy with His Lordship – the devil has always appeared to have a soft spot for females. He used to tolerate Mey-Rin's mistakes and stumbling with a far better grace than he tolerated his or Finnian's errors, and was never any less than unfailingly patient with Lady Elizabeth when she was a demanding child with a penchant for costumes and cuteness.

Lady Rachel, it seems, is destined to carry on that old tradition.

***

"With your permission, Baldroy," Sebastian says politely, taking the saucepan from him in the kitchen that evening.

"I'd be honoured to cook beside you again, but you're the steward now, Mister Sebastian. You shouldn't have to bustle about like this."

"I've always been the acting steward," Sebastian tells him. "Human titles make no difference to what I choose to do for my master and his household."

So they cook side by side once more, working smoothly together, whipping up an impressive meal for the family first, then the staff. As always, Sebastian has no interest in mortal food – he is sated on the taste of his master, and besides, for ten years, the excessive power violently seeking equilibrium in and through him filled him so that he never felt a moment's hunger, despite at least three years of terrible pain.

As the others dine, Sebastian takes time to inspect the manor with a critical eye. It is a little dusty in parts. But what can one expect when the housemaids are busy being nannies and governesses? They need a proper housemaid. Upstairs, it is clear that Ciel and Lizzie regularly share the room that Ciel's parents used to share, but they each have their own private bedrooms to dress in and retire to when they wish to be alone. Ciel still uses his old bedroom for those purposes, from the scent and look of it.

The quality of the food is as excellent as ever – Baldroy is no fool when dealing with grocers and butchers. There is a supply of hot, clean water through the taps now, so no more boiling of bathwater in the kitchen is required. Finnian is speaking excitedly about how Lord Midford is encouraging Lord Phantomhive to buy a motor car, but the earl prefers his horses and carriage.

The security is almost perfect. Carsten, who seems to have grown curiously attached to the family, and regularly sleeps in the stables, lets nothing past him. The governess cannot replace Mey-Rin for long-distance defence, but she looks as if she can be vicious with that staff of hers; it is the younger sister, Vidya, who it seems has the keen vision and aptitude for accurate shooting that can be developed, though she is still too young to be put to serious defensive work.

The stables are clean, and the horses healthy. The old carriage horses are retired, like Tanaka, dozing in the stalls and given free run of the paddock each day. The newer, younger horses with their shiny coats of black are of good stock, well chosen by Finny. The black cat is still here, old now but just as beautiful, and Sebastian spends a good while lavishing caresses on her.

The gardens are fine, although some trimming would be in order here and there. He turns into the sterling silver rose garden, and finds it perfectly maintained. He must commend Finnian for doing such a beautiful job with these blooms… Then he sees them – the paler sterling silvers he developed for his master – standing proudly in an impressive row along one wall. How they have flourished, and how beautiful their near-whiteness is in the darkness, just like the one whose presence he now senses in the garden.

"They're more breathtaking today than they ever were," Ciel's voice comes from behind him. "They must know you have returned."

"What a fanciful idea," Sebastian smiles. "I never imagined Ciel Phantomhive imputing consciousness to flowers."

"If you've seen the forest and flower nymphs I've seen almost daily over the last decade, you'll know why I suddenly seem fanciful," Ciel replies with an answering smile, stepping up to his devil, remembering that the last time they stood facing each other in this very garden, his head only reached the middle of Sebastian's chest.

"But your family _has_ softened you, has it not?"

"Of course they have," Ciel admits. "I would do anything for their good, and in some ways, that has made me more indulgent. But they have also made me harder and more vicious in other ways, because I would destroy anyone or anything who might threaten their safety."

"I would not harm anything precious to you," Sebastian remarks. "But if for any reason any of your family should attempt to harm you, I will not hesitate to defend you against them."

"I know," Ciel answers softly. "So we had better make sure they never do any such thing. Vincent can be headstrong, though, and I can see him challenging me in the years to come. I shall have to take care that his obstinacy never turns into a disadvantage for him."

"He is just like his father."

"Is he, now?" Ciel asks a little tartly.

"Every bit. But unlike his father, who had no one to govern him at a young age and was given absolute freedom to do as he pleased, Lord Winterbourn will have both his parents in his life for a long time to come, so he is very likely to turn out much better than you."

" _What_ is wrong with the way I have turned out, might I ask?" Ciel demands.

"You are still a little petulant, and still quick to take offence," Sebastian muses, a finger on his chin. " _Some_ things don't change."

" _You_ certainly haven't," the earl mutters.

"Oh, but I have, Young Master," Sebastian replies. "Where once I would have made an effort to keep you more disciplined, I fear that now, I am only going to indulge you."

"You were strict enough in our little forest out there," Ciel says, blushing lightly despite his age, as he recalls how the devil pounced on him and held him down.

"As were you."

"We can keep such spaces to escape to when we must, can't we?" he asks hopefully.

"Of course."

"Then for now, let's go back to the house. You've been away long enough. Lizzie and I have arranged for a bedroom for you on the second level, like Tanaka's."

"What if I want my old bedroom back, with all its memories of you?"

Ciel flushes once more, feeling himself a child again, sneezing on Sebastian's cat-hair-covered bed. "We can keep that unoccupied for you to use whenever you choose. But I think you'll like your new room and its attached sitting room," he whispers, leaning towards Sebastian to steal a kiss while they are still here behind the wall. "I won't neglect Lizzie – she doesn't deserve anything unhappy in her life – and we won't let the children know – they're too young to understand – but you'll be seeing more of me than you _want_ to."

"I could never see too much of you," Sebastian answers, kissing him back. "However, we will be discreet, as we always were."

"Let's go back inside."

In the darkness, Ciel slips his hand into Sebastian's and leaves the garden with him, walking close to him so that anyone who might be watching from the house will not see that their hands are linked.

They must walk between the worlds, seeking those fine lines on the ground that run between their private sphere and the dimensions of heaven, hell and earth that may not welcome them. But Ciel is pleased to play this game, for it is a new chessboard, a new universe of their own, where Sebastian is no longer his knight, nor his adversary, but the one who plays beside him as an ally and partner – and with him, he can take on every world that would damn them.


	38. Love

Elizabeth thanks Paula and dismisses her with a smile after the maid has helped her with her bath and dressing for bed, and removed all the pins from her hair.

"Good night, my lady," the ever-cheerful and faithful Paula says as she leaves the room.

"Good night, Paula."

The countess leans across her side of the bed to the nightstand. She snuffs the candle in the glass lamp, lies down, and pulls the covers up to her chest. She stares at the canopy of her poster bed till her eyes adjust to the darkness, relieved only by the flames that still flicker in the fireplace. Summer it may be, and the days are long, but the closed drapes shut out the last glow of twilight that would otherwise enter the room.

It has been six days since Sebastian returned to the house. She cannot imagine that the place has ever been cleaner, or better run. She cannot remember the entire household being this happy since each of the children was born. Ciel has had an immense weight lifted off him, after years of stoically enduring the burden of not knowing Sebastian's fate. The staff are in good spirits, for the new steward takes on the tasks they cannot manage. Tanaka is sick and unlikely to recover, but he is smiling as he fades. And the children, always fascinated by Carsten, are equally intrigued by the tall, handsome figure in black who is impeccably proper and gentle with them.

She wants to believe it is all perfect, but she cannot lie to herself. This is not easy for her. No woman who loves her husband wants to share him with another lover.

They have been extremely discreet out of respect for her and consideration for the children, but a wife knows things no one else does. She knows when her husband comes to her and when he does not, and what they do when they are alone. She _knows_.

She and Ciel have mostly shared his parents' old bedroom since they married. This is primarily her room, though she has another of her own for times when she needs privacy, or to dress more elaborately for parties. Ciel too retains the bedroom of his childhood for his dressing and bath needs. They have on occasion slept separately since becoming man and wife, when either was unwell and did not wish to disturb the other's rest; or when Ciel would come home very late from underworld missions covered in someone else's blood and not want to unsettle her. For the most part, though, he has spent his nights here or visited her for part of the night, as respectable men do. Her own parents, loving as they are, do not always sleep in the same bed. She has grown up knowing that husbands and wives from good families are not expected to mimic the habits of poor married couples, who have nowhere else but a shared bed to tumble into together. Nobles are supposed to be different.

She half-wishes she could say that she is unhappy because Ciel has neglected her since Sebastian returned, or that he has not come to her bed since that day. She wishes she could say it, for it would be a reason for this mild discontentment. But she cannot resort to that cheap excuse, for it is untrue.

Ciel has not neglected her. He has spent at least part of every night here, with her. He has been an attentive and loving husband, a good companion to her as always, talking of the children, the mundane matters of the household, the intriguing matters of the court and the underworld, laughing with her at jokes they have heard, about people they know. He is as tender to her as ever.

He has broken no vows either, for theirs was a civil marriage begun at a register office. It was highly unusual for people of their rank, but the straightforward promises required in such ceremonies were the most acceptable to them both. After the registration before a clerk in her parents' presence, they held a grand celebration at her father's house, which the Prince of Wales attended, and where John Jarvis read a sermon. But Ciel never made any oaths before God or man that he would cleave only to her or forsake all others.

He has broken no promises. He loves her; he loves their children. He touches her as he always did since she became his wife – intimately, lovingly, affectionately, giving her everything that so many women hope for from their aristocratic husbands but never receive.

"I am very blessed," she sighs.

A shadow crosses her window on silent wings. Carsten, making his nocturnal rounds.

With _two_ devils present and loyal to the household, she feels extremely safe. These are not the evil creatures who attacked their little human group inside that mysterious sphere ten years ago; these demons defied their brethren to protect those who could not defend themselves. Elizabeth finds herself thinking of devils, angels, heaven and God. If she were particularly religious, she would have insisted on a church wedding. But her mother was always leery of formal religions, which have sometimes been hostile to her birth family, and raised her children to be cautious about the church. Still, Lizzie knows her religious texts and has great respect for Vicar Jarvis. So she allows herself to indulge in the fancy that Sebastian and Carsten, having turned against hell, might one day recover some measure of salvation.

 _One never knows,_ she thinks, and she finds herself smiling into the darkness. Wishing for something good for someone else always gives her pleasure and a lighter heart. She sighs again, but with better cheer this time. She knew what she was walking into from the start. She knew what would happen. She really cannot complain. How ungrateful it would be of her to be bitter about this, and how futile.

Galvanised by her turn of thought, she sits up, throws the covers off, swings her legs over the side of the bed, and strikes a match to re-light the candle in the lamp. Driven by her positive impulses, she pulls out writing paper from the desk drawer, ink and a fountain pen, and starts scribbling a note to her mother.

_Dearest Mother,_

_This is but a short note to inform you of what you doubtless already know: Sebastian Michaelis has returned to the Phantomhive household. Though I have not heard a word from you about this matter, I am certain that you are planning to do something about it._

_Therefore, I am writing to tell you very plainly that I am entirely contented with his return to the manor, and it is my hope that whatever you plan to do will be in harmony with my feelings on the matter._

_This is_ my _household, Mother, and I shall run it the way I consider best. I pray you will not contradict my plans for my home and all who dwell in it._

_With all my love,_

_Elizabeth_

As she signs off with a satisfied flourish and starts blowing on the ink so it will dry faster, a knock comes at the door, and Ciel enters.

"I thought you'd be in bed by now," he says in surprise, coming up to her at the desk to put his arms around her and kiss her shining fall of golden hair. "What are you doing?"

"Just writing a quick note to my mother."

"At this hour? Come to bed – the wind's up outside. We're in for a heavy summer rainstorm tonight."

"One moment," she murmurs, folding up the letter and inserting it into an envelope. "I wanted to fire this off while I was in the mood. I suddenly thought it would be good to remind her that this is _our_ family and our home, not _hers_."

"You're thinking of Sebastian, aren't you?"

"I am."

"She suspected that he and I were unusually close ten years ago, but she's never said a word."

"Only because Sebastian hasn't been heard from in ten years. Now that he is back, I am certain she is waiting for a suitable time to say something. I am doing all I can to keep her quiet."

"You don't have to do this."

"I know," she smiles brightly. "That's why it makes me happy to do it."

He presses his mouth to hers, making her squeal when he lifts her swiftly into his arms and carries her off to bed.

She knows he will leave her while she sleeps. To go to _him_. He may return to her before she wakes. She will be unconscious of his absence, in all probability. But she will _know_ , anyway.

Still, she has his love and affection, and that is more than she often thought she would ever have when they were children and she was the one always running after him while he fled from her emotionally and literally.

As she returns his kisses and welcomes his advances for more, she promises herself that she will be happy with everything she has, and never be stupid enough to lament the few things she does not.

It is not perfect, but nothing in life ever is.

It is not perfect, but without Sebastian's sacrifice, there would be nothing for her here.

It is not perfect, but it has to be enough.

***

Sebastian lies on his back on the comfortable bed in his new bedroom, listening to the sound of the rain outside. Devils have no need for the material trappings of humans, but he appreciates deeply that it is a tremendous improvement from his situation of the last ten years, and from his humble butler's bed before that.

Comfort, pleasure and sleep are luxuries he can survive without, but they are most welcome when he can have them. For years inside the sphere, his powers were so unstable that he could not perform the simplest demonic magic or any of Ambrose's magic without the risk of pushing himself over the edge. Ciel's magical gifts of grass, trees, gentle light, pleasing landscaping and cool water were his only luxuries, and they helped his healing along more than his devilish pride had initially wished to admit.

Only in his last few years in that prison, when true healing and recovery were underway, was he able to safely call into being items like proper new garments for his use.

It was also in those years of healing that he was able to take pride in never having attempted to bargain with God during his countless hours of agony for any relief or benefit to himself. He could have yielded, could have been tempted by his suffering to offer anything in exchange for the smallest reprieve. He could have promised never to touch the boy again, never to devour another soul, never to take another life, to spend the next fifty thousand years doing penance for his millennia of sin. He could have turned bitter, resenting the child, stewing in hatred for the petty mortals for whom he had done so much, turning rancid like Azazel.

However, he did none of that in his hours of pain, and he would do none of it in his hours of healing. He remains proud of his refusal to yield to weakness or hate, and he can think back calmly on those years.

But there is something he does not like to look back on from his imprisonment in the sphere. He will never admit it to anyone else, but while he was there, he _did_ wrestle with God in his own way, like Jacob on the bank of the Jabbok, only not in any physical sense. It was a combat of the spirit different from that of the hopeless revolt in which he was first dismissed from heaven. There was a kind of communication – grudging on his part, while the motivations of the Other were opaque to him.

He spoke the truth when he told Ciel that he did not know what was behind Azazel's message that hell was not to harm him or Ciel. Indeed, he does not know – he cannot be certain. But somewhere deep in his mind, he thinks of how his tainted spirit wrestled with the impossible purity of God's spirit, and he wonders...

So much of any creature's existence depends on negotiation. The negotiation may be verbal, but may just as well be conducted in gestures, the attitude of the body, in mute exchanges and silent understanding – things the beasts of the field instinctively understand as they champion their own existence within their packs and herds and flocks. Humans, demons and angels negotiate in all those ways, and through words and the spirit too.

He is engaged in a long and elaborate negotiation, whether he likes it or not, whether he is always consciously aware of it or not. Appropriate punishment, perhaps, for his once engaging Ciel in a battle for two days without informing him they were in a duel – until the clever child worked it out for himself and promptly slapped him.

He is negotiating with Lady Elizabeth for time with her husband; with Ciel for opportunities to serve him better and give him greater pleasure; with the children for the right to be in their lives, so their father will not be torn between any of his loved ones; with the staff for the authority to command them without offending them, so that Ciel will not be made unhappy over any discontentment in his manor.

He may also be negotiating for something even bigger, unheard of in the history of angels and demons, unheard of in the history of humankind, something without precedent. Can he be as cunning as the child was at the age of thirteen, to change the arrangement of the chessboard so he could win the game? But the child only had a devil as his opponent, whereas that very devil's own opponent now is infinitely more vast than himself. Cunning is of no use in this unknown game...

The door of his bedroom clicks open. He does not have to look to know who is there. He already knew he was coming, even while deep in thought. While imprisoned, he had been concerned that he might lose his ability to tell where Ciel was if he ever returned to the mortal realm. But from the moment he left the sphere, he sensed at once his master's location. Ciel has grown quite clever with magic, and sometimes disguises his whereabouts for a few minutes, but he always breaks through his playful smokescreens to pinpoint him eventually.

Here he is now, coming to him in the middle of this windblown night with a lamp, climbing into his bed. There he lies on his side, gazing at him contentedly out of his eyes of heavenly blue, taking the greatest pleasure simply in being with him.

Sebastian looks back at him with what he is certain is greater pleasure. The young man's human eyes cannot make out colour or great detail in such poor lighting, but his demon's eyes see everything – the healthy flush of youth on those cheeks, the perfect cerulean hue of his irises with only a mote of magenta in the right, the faint lines on his skin that will over the decades deepen into the wrinkles and creases of old age.

"You could have summoned me to your room and spared yourself the walk," Sebastian murmurs.

"I know. But I got used to not calling out to you while we were apart all those years."

"I felt you calling me sometimes."

"Yes, sometimes I forgot that I shouldn't. I hated to think that by calling to you, I would hurt you, because you might hear and suffer the pain of not being able to come to me. I forced myself not to think of or speak your name in such a way that might be considered as summoning you."

"I liked hearing your call," Sebastian tells him. "It hurt not to be able to respond, but it pleased me to hear it from time to time. It was only fair that I should sometimes feel the pull of your call, for I was able to sense the kisses and caresses you sent me, and the words of affection. They were two sides of the same coin."

"I'll be happy to summon you all you like from now on. But don't forget that I sometimes like making my way to you too. I have since I was thirteen, remember?"

"How could I forget?" he asks, deciding there and then that he will negotiate with God another day. For now, he wants himself and Ciel to be left alone to sin.

They meet in the middle of the bed for a kiss. He can taste Elizabeth on Ciel's breath, on his tongue, on his lips. Her scent and flavour do not offend him, for she is of Ciel's blood, and she has given the earl two beautiful children who have helped to heal their father's heart.

The kiss progresses into another playful and combative session of lovemaking in which Sebastian permits Ciel to take him. It will often be better this way, for his immortal body will sustain no damage while deriving considerable pleasure from the act, whereas Ciel's human body may not be able to cope with too-frequent penetration. The young man will simply have to put his mouth and hands to good use...

Ciel is about to collapse into an exhausted sleep when Sebastian suddenly moves at devilish speed to dress them both in a second, throw a surprised Ciel over his shoulder, and fly upstairs so fast that before he knows it, the earl is deposited back into his equally astonished wife's bed.

"Sebastian! What...?" Ciel and Lizzie both cry out.

But the devil lights the lamp so that they can see him, puts a finger over his lips with a smile, and whispers: "My lord, my lady, the storm outside is making Lord Winterbourn nervous. He is coming down the passageway."

The steward vanishes behind a screen as the door handle turns, and little Vincent appears in the doorway.

"Mama?" the child whispers. "Papa?"

"What is it, darling?" Lizzie asks.

"Please may I sleep in your bed for a while?" the boy asks, trying to keep his voice steady, but unable to disguise the faint tremor in it as the wind howls outside.

"Come here," Ciel calls, as Lizzie holds her arms out. The child runs to their bed, scrambles over the covers between them, and burrows under the blanket, safe between his parents.

At the same time, a loud wail comes down the corridor, and a flustered Vidya, who sleeps in Rachel's room to tend to her feeding and changing needs at night, stumbles into the doorway with the toddler in her arms.

"I beg your pardon, my lady, my lord," the nursemaid says. "Lord Winterbourn entered Lady Rachel's room a moment ago to see if she was frightened by the storm, and that woke her. After he left her room, she started crying that she wanted to be with him..."

"Bring her here," Lizzie laughs. "She can sleep here tonight too."

Vidya hands the child to her mother and leaves the room, closing the door after her.

Rachel gurgles happily, snuggles up to her brother, and falls asleep with Lizzie's hand resting on her head. Vincent stays awake longer, scoffing sleepily at his sister: "What a _baby_."

Ciel smiles down at his son, who tries to be haughty even when he is just as much of a baby as his sibling. He remembers how he sought comfort in his parents' bed when he himself was a child. How he missed that sense of unconditional love and security for years, and how much it means to him to be able to provide the same love and security to his children. He would never have any of this if not for the silent figure behind the screen.

When at last Vincent too is deep in sleep, Sebastian emerges from his hiding place and approaches the bed to gaze at the children.

"Thank you, Sebastian," Ciel whispers. "For everything."

"Good night, my lord, my lady."

"Sebastian," Lizzie calls softly.

"Yes, my lady?" he asks, going over to her side of the bed so that she will not have to speak any louder, lest she wake the children.

She takes his hand and pulls lightly at his arm, indicating by the pressure that he should bend down towards her. Thinking she wishes to whisper something, he leans down close to her, only to be surprised by a kiss on his cheek.

"Thank you for letting my children find both their parents here tonight," she says with the utmost gratitude. "Thank you for all that I have. Now give Ciel a goodnight kiss before you go."

He looks deeply into her eyes and sees that she has gone through a struggle which she is very likely to go through over and over again as long as she lives. He kisses her back – a gentle peck on the lips – then leans across her and the children and kisses Ciel goodnight.

He blows out the lamp for them and leaves the room with a smile, vanishing in the doorway so that Vidya or anyone else who may be in the passageway will not see that he has been there at all.

***

In the morning, Ciel leaves for London with Sebastian. The devil takes the reins, so they will be alone. The family knows they will be away for a few days, for Ciel has Funtom business to attend to. To the children, it is merely work that will take their father away for a while. To Lizzie, it is an opportunity for Ciel and Sebastian to spend time alone in the town house – and also the first time in ten years that Jarvis, Prince Soma, Agni and Mey-Rin will see Sebastian.

Their friends in London do not know that he has returned; Ciel has kept it a secret, wishing to surprise them. They are the ones who normally make their way to the manor every week, but last week, they decided to invite Ciel and Lizzie to London, although Lizzie chose to remain at home with the children while Ciel went. This time, Ciel telephoned them again to say he would see them in the city.

The elegantly dressed master and his black-clad demon wave goodbye to the family and staff, and nod to Carsten as they pass him in the forest. Up to London they go, traversing the familiar paths, Sebastian noting the changes in the buildings around him, and the greater number of motor vehicles on the roads. Ciel puts his head out of the window once in a while purely for the pleasure of seeing his devil up there on the box seat – a sight he has not enjoyed in a decade.

They pull up in front of Soma's London house. Agni, despite owning property and being very rich, has always considered himself his prince's devoted slave. Only in recent years has Soma at last convinced the man to regard himself as a friend, and to accept the fact that the hired servants in the house are supposed to serve him and Mey-Rin too.

So it is a butler Sebastian has never met who opens the door to them and shows them into the drawing room. And it is in the drawing room that complete and utter pandemonium erupts when Sebastian enters behind Ciel.

Soma, much more mature and manly at twenty-eight – but not so much that he refrains from screaming like a child now – flings himself at Sebastian, while Mey-Rin shrieks, Agni gasps in delight, and Jarvis laughs with pure joy and surprise.

"Sebastian!"

"Mister Sebastian!"

"Ohhhh... Mister Sebastian!"

"My dear friend."

To those heartfelt greetings, Sebastian replies simply but sincerely: "I am immensely pleased to set eyes on all of you again."

The hired servants are sent out of the room. A hundred questions are asked of Sebastian and Ciel, and a hundred answers given honestly. Greater discretion is needed in the dining room while they have lunch, for the servants are present. But what needs to be said is said, and what the humans wish to express to Sebastian is more than adequately conveyed in their looks, smiles, tears and laughter. They tell him of their lives since he was last with them. Soma's pieces of property are doing extremely well; he is quite the wealthy prince now, and has even been able to return to his father the capital sum he gave him. Agni is his business partner and remains his constant, devoted companion.

Children are normally barred from these weekly meetings so the grown-ups can talk, but the Brahmin and Mey-Rin bring their children downstairs to meet Sebastian. The devil has the pleasure of discerning that the two boys, aged five and four, are both as good-natured as their parents, and endowed with their striking looks.

Jarvis is older and greyer, but reports that he remains in excellent health. What pleases him more is that many of the poorer people of his parish are doing well, for Lord Phantomhive has given some of them steady employment in his toy factory, confectioners' shops and restaurants, and funded the schooling expenses of those children whose parents are unable or unwilling to work, giving the young ones hope and an opportunity to rise above their circumstances.

Sebastian gives Ciel a sideway glance, which Ciel refuses to return, for he does not like admitting that having his own family has at last made his long resistance against his compassionate instincts futile.

After lunch and more conversation, Ciel decides it is time for them to leave, and offers Jarvis a ride back to the vicarage. Soma quickly gives them his driver's services for the day, so that Sebastian can sit inside the carriage with Ciel and the vicar. The teary-eyed prince impulsively embraces the devil again before he lets him go. Once, he would never have dared to hug Sebastian, but he is very happy to see him again, and the years have made him braver.

"I have truly missed our regular meetings, Mister Michaelis," Jarvis says, when they have waved goodbye to their friends and the carriage is in motion. The vicar is sitting beside Ciel, facing forward, while Sebastian sits across from them.

"I too have missed the talks we had," the demon admits.

"I never knew of those regular meetings until Mister Jarvis told me about them one day, a few months after you were sealed into the sphere," Ciel sighs, giving Sebastian a sharp look. "You did _lots_ of things behind my back."

"It was all for your good, Young Master."

"If you ever do anything for my good again without explaining it to me immediately, I shall have _something_ to say about it," Ciel warns.

"I tremble in fear," Sebastian remarks with irony.

"You say that so coolly, yet I know how badly you feared that Lord Phantomhive would come to harm, or that he would hate you, and never live his life in a fulfilling way," Jarvis laughs.

"Is _that_ so, now?" Ciel exclaims mischievously, his handsome face above the fine white silk cravat suddenly looking less like that of a twenty-four-year-old man's than a cheeky boy's. But in opposition to his teasing tone of voice, he reaches out and takes Sebastian's hand. Both of them are wearing black leather gloves; there is no skin-to-skin contact, yet it is a tender and intimate gesture, and Jarvis glances away from them with a smile, looking out of the window at the passing sights of central London until they unclasp their hands.

When they reach the vicarage, Ciel shoos them out of the carriage, saying: "Go have another of your secret talks behind my back. I'm off to inspect the new bakery that Funtom opened a five-minute drive from here. I'll _call_ for you, Sebastian, when I'm ready!"

With that, he pulls the carriage door shut and gives Soma's coachman the name of the road to drive to.

Sebastian enters the vicarage to learn that Tomkin the ginger cat has passed away, along with at least half of the other original feline "Apostles", for many of them were street cats that Jarvis had adopted when they were already well along in cat years.

"I was quite upset when Tomkin died four years ago," Jarvis confesses, after he has made them some tea. "It felt as if the very final remnant of my daughter had left me. But something wonderful happened a week after that. My son-in-law, Richard, returned from India, with an orphaned child of mixed race whom he had adopted – an illegitimate son of one of his fellow-soldiers who was killed in a conflict in Kabul. He has resigned his commission and lives only two streets away now. He visits me every day with the child. He has never remarried, but what an excellent father he makes. The little boy is not my flesh and blood, nor his, but he has come to be my grandson. I feel as if Nellie has returned in spirit through her husband, and through the child Richard took in out of kindness."

"I am truly happy for you, Mister Jarvis," Sebastian says. "Truly."

"I thank you for your good thoughts. You must meet Richard and the child one day. Whatever else has changed in my life, though, I have not stopped taking in cats, as you can see!"

Indeed, the house is as full of cats as ever, though the newer ones are not named after the Apostles, but have the names of places from the Bible, like Jordan, Galilee, Nazareth, Ephesus, Galatia and Beth, for Bethlehem.

Nazareth jumps lightly onto Sebastian's lap, and the devil takes much pleasure in stroking the white-coated beauty with yellow-green eyes. While he admires the cat, Jarvis walks to the other end of the small house, unlocks a desk drawer, and takes out the silver disc that the demon gave him ten years ago.

"I'll return this to you, Sebastian," the vicar says, coming back to where the devil is seated. "I think you will be here for Lord Phantomhive from now on, and won't need my old bones to rush to his rescue any more."

"Thank you, Mister Jarvis," Sebastian receives the disc from him, mirroring the process that took place in this house the day after Ciel's fourteenth birthday.

"You really did everything in your power to ensure that he would be safe and well even without you by his side, didn't you?" the vicar observes. "I never told him about what else you did for him where I was concerned, beyond explaining about the disc. You asked me to keep it secret, and I did."

"I am grateful for that."

"If he did not already know how much you love him, I would tell him – about the prayers you asked me to pray, about the protection from other demons that you asked me to request on his behalf, about all the things to do with a God you say you forsook and betrayed, just to keep him safe. About the letters addressed to the Prince of Wales that you left with a lawyer in the event that you did not return before His Royal Highness became king. But I see that Lord Phantomhive knows how great your love is, so I will not have to be the one to tell him these things."

"Love, Mister Jarvis?" Sebastian says. "Devils do not love. We may feel some manner of affection or tenderness, protectiveness or possessiveness, but we have forgotten how to love."

"Is that so now?" the vicar asks, echoing Ciel, raising his greying eyebrows somewhat dramatically. " _Really_?"

"Of course," Sebastian states.

"Very well, if you say so," the man remarks cheerfully, picking up a brown-ticked cat and sitting down in his armchair to feed the cat a biscuit. "Then I shall instead say this to you, Sebastian Michaelis: For the mercy you showed that child at the very beginning, when he tells me you could have taken his life and his soul, and for the mercy you have shown him since that time, when you could have harmed him over and over again, may you be richly blessed."

"My sparing him at the beginning of our second contract was really no more than an impulse," Sebastian says.

"Even the least of impulses originates from something deeper and greater inside us."

"I suppose you will tell me now that it was compassion and love?" Sebastian remarks.

"All of us – human, angel or demon – fall into the habit of thinking of ourselves in certain terms," Jarvis replies. "We are reluctant to believe ourselves capable of profound change. I thought of myself for decades as a man who loved dogs but disliked cats. When I took Tomkin in after Nellie died, I still thought of myself as no lover of cats, believing I was caring for this cat only because he had belonged to my daughter, and was her only 'child'. But the creature grew in my affections as the months passed, and lo and behold, one day I realised that I had become a man who was very fond of cats. Perhaps in the same way, Sebastian, you are a devil who has truly learnt to love."

"Very well, if you say so," it is Sebastian's turn to playfully echo the vicar's words from a minute ago, though he makes it plain from his amused tone that he is not convinced. "But you surely do not approve of the manner in which I express my _love_ to the young man, and how he chooses to express his affection for me?"

"I said to you years ago that as a man of the church, I cannot approve. But as a friend, I feel for you, I understand, and I empathise."

"What of your religion's belief that many angels turned to demons long ago precisely because they consorted far too intimately with humans, the way I consort with the young man?"

"I believe you could tell me the truth of that far better than I can tell it to you."

"Angels have fallen for many more reasons than that over the course of eternity."

"I would imagine so."

"And for none of those reasons is there any forgiveness."

"I was taught – and I believe – that forgiveness is always there, waiting for us, but we lack the readiness to receive it until we humbly repent."

"But devils – and earls of Phantomhive – do not repent of the things they do."

"Then devils and earls of Phantomhive, with all their cunning and arcane knowledge and peculiar love, must perhaps find for themselves worlds that fall between the absolute lines of heaven, earth and hell."

"You are a very wise man, Mister Jarvis," Sebastian smiles. "You have very nearly read my mind there."

"And you are a very kind demon, Mister Michaelis. When the time comes, you will have to think of the salvation of the young man's soul, whatever that may mean to you and to him."

"I am aware of that. When the time comes, I shall have to follow my impulses," the devil says wryly.

"May God bless you, Sebastian Michaelis."

The devil stares at the vicar in astonishment before recovering his equanimity to smile and comment: "What a thing to say."

 _Sebastian!_ comes the call from where Ciel is waiting and ready for him.

Sebastian rises, takes his leave of John Jarvis, and bids him a respectful goodbye at the door. Watched affectionately by the vicar, he moves up the road away from the churchyard, travelling swiftly and steadily towards Ciel, steering his course by the sound of his master's voice.


	39. Epilogue: Heaven

Within the sprawling grounds of the Phantomhive estate on the edge of London is the plot of land where the family still buries its own. While many of the great houses of Britain have faded in power, prestige and influence, selling off ancestral homes and land for badly needed money, the Winterbourns thrive.

All the property, wealth and titles they wish to keep have been kept. The old manor is still in excellent condition. Though it is no longer surrounded on all sides by thick forest, it retains its mysterious, grand and intimidating air to those who come upon it for the first time. A Countess of Phantomhive resides here, the latest in a long line of aristocrats who have held the title. Most of her children and grandchildren live with her or visit often.

All the graves here receive visitors regularly, for the family remembers its history and keeps it close to their hearts. The Winterbourns walk out here together on significant dates to pay their respects to those who came and went before them. The headstones are always clean, the grass neat, and the flowers beautiful – one of their many gardeners is dedicated to the job. The smaller Winterbourn children sometimes play amongst the stone and marble markers, bringing their laughter and cheer to the resting places of their ancestors, who for too long had little to laugh about.

One of the most striking headstones, tall and elegant in black marble with gold lettering, reads:

Ciel Winterbourn

  


Fifteenth Earl of Phantomhive

  


Born 14th December 1875

  


Beloved husband, father, friend and companion.

  


"I repent of nothing."

It is remarkable not only for its beauty and defiant words, but also because it does not bear a date of death. And the family remembers through the stories it tells from one generation to the next that this particular resting place was remarkable for a variety of other reasons too.

First, it is common knowledge that there is another headstone beneath the one above the ground. It also bears Ciel's name, but it gives December 1885 as the date of his passing. The history of that buried headstone is well-known even beyond the family circle: when Ciel Phantomhive was a child, he had been thought killed by those who had murdered his parents, his small body lost forever in a terrible inferno that engulfed the manor. The stone marker had been erected between the graves of his parents.

But the child had returned alive a month later, having escaped from his kidnappers, with a black-clad butler by his side. Some time in the years that followed, the premature grave marker was removed and put away.

Then there was the matter of the present black-marble headstone having been erected in 1926, with the first three lines beautifully chiselled into the stone, leaving an empty space below, as if waiting for more to come. The earl was said to have died while travelling abroad, and his ashes returned to his family. But those who are old enough to remember will recall how, despite this earl having been deeply loved by his wife, children, friends and servants, there appeared to be little mourning in 1926 when the headstone was put up and the ashes interred.

His countess, Lady Elizabeth, was often seen walking out to the grave and tarrying there, but with a gentle smile, sometimes touching her fingers to the stone. His children, too, were often seen speaking with their mother there, calm and smiling; and his staff, many of whom were known for being emotional, were seen to pat the stone cheerfully, for nearly thirty years after it was put up.

Another remarkable anecdote associated with the earl and the headstone was that his steward, Sebastian Michaelis, perhaps the person closest to him, was rarely seen to visit the grave after the funeral. On those few occasions that he did, he was always in the company of another man whose face was obscured by a hat and scarf. Those close enough to see might have seen that the mysterious man accompanying the steward had eyes of the deepest blue, like a forest reflected in a calm ocean. But the only ones near enough to see were family and dearest friends, who would not talk.

Even if they would talk, there would be so much they could not tell, so much that was private and secret between Ciel Winterbourn and the one he most loved.

These are but a few of the tales that will never be told in their entirety by anyone from or close to the family.

***

The earl loves being dressed by his demon, even though he is perfectly capable of dressing himself. Unlike an ordinary valet, Sebastian is his lover and companion, so Ciel can lean in for a kiss as he knots his cravat, buttons his waistcoat or secures his pins. The devil is always pleased to kiss him back, and hold him when he simply wants to be held. Sometimes they have to dress him all over again, on those mornings when they tumble back into bed and undo everything that has been buttoned and knotted.

There is no laughter and teasing or lovemaking today, however, because it is January in the year 1901, and Queen Victoria is dead. Great Britain is in mourning.

"I'm going to miss her, although she made my life miserable sometimes," Ciel sighs as Sebastian helps him secure his cuffs. "But it's Tanaka I really miss."

For old Tanaka has finally given up the ghost. He passed away in some physical pain but in mental and spiritual peace a week ago, requesting that he be cremated, and his ashes scattered over the grounds of the estate.

"I know, Young Master," the devil replies softly, straightening a crease in the left sleeve of the earl's pure-white, fine-wool coat. The queen had instructed, before her death, that everyone should wear white at her funeral.

Ciel reaches out with his right hand and strokes the lapel of Sebastian's coat, as if adjusting it. Of course it is impeccably in place and spotless, so there is nothing to adjust. But the demon understands his smallest gestures by now, even the most insignificant of them. He understands that Ciel always needs time to ease into a position of vulnerability with him, because in all other arenas of his life, he is the leader, the father, the husband, the ruthless aristocrat who does not hold back when required to keep family, throne and country safe.

Knowing his unsettled feelings at this time of change and loss, Sebastian strokes his cheek gently, letting him know through his touch that he can discard his other roles here. At once, Ciel responds to the touch, nestles into him, wraps his arms about him, and rests his head on his shoulder, breathing in the devilish scent only he can detect, taking comfort in the familiarity, the protection, the immense love that has never spoken its name, but which they both understand intimately.

***

It does not seem so very long before they are again facing each other in a similar situation, but in fact, nine years have flown by, and it is now King Edward VII who has passed away. Disapproved of in his younger days, but genuinely loved by the people since ascending to the throne, he is truly mourned.

Ciel does not know of the things that took place behind the scenes, but Sebastian does, for he had a hand in reminding the king of his promises. And the king remembered. Some months before his death, while recovering from a bronchial infection, the king spoke privately with his surviving son, George, and revealed secrets to him that the prince would always remember.

Edward was close to George, and had always been pleased that they could speak like friends and brothers rather than an authoritarian father and submissive son; he would not have wanted the distance between them to be like that which had existed between himself and his mother.

"We who have ruled England for hundreds of years did the Phantomhives a terrible wrong a long time ago, George," the king said.

"What do you mean, Father?" George asked affectionately, adjusting the duvet over the king's chest.

"Things beyond my knowledge nearly all my life are now within my power to rectify. Centuries ago, magic was performed – don't laugh, it is true, I only learnt the truth a few years ago – magic was performed to ensure that the Phantomhives would always serve us, the rulers of England, but never become powerful enough to challenge us. The magic unfortunately worked by decimating them at regular intervals. Thank God, the spell has been undone, but they remain chained to us – and I speak broadly of 'us' as the kings and queens of this island – to us, who did that wrong against them. The leash that binds them is passed down from sovereign to sovereign, but I shall not hand it to you. It is time to let them be, time to let them do what good or evil they do, without being chained to us any more than any other title of the peerage is."

"I don't know if I really understand all this, Father, but I know you have carefully considered it, and I accept whatever you have to do," was Prince George's sensible reply.

So there and then, Edward VII burnt the papers which spelt out the instructions for how the monarchs of England could affect the fate of the Phantomhives through means beyond politics and human power.

Ciel and his children were finally uncollared, freed from the very last vestige of the spell.

"Protect them if you can, to make up for the injustice they suffered in the shadow of the throne all these generations," said the king to his heir. "But to tell you truly, I do not know if you can even protect yourself. The way things are going in Europe… with Germany and her allies… there will soon be a great war. I wish it would not come in your time, but I fear it will."

Ciel does not know of all this which happened months ago while feeling deeply the loss of this king who has been very good to him and his family. But Sebastian knows, and he holds the earl as he did nine years ago, giving him strength and comfort, while also drawing from him the affection and intimacy that the devil so enjoys.

"You are free, do you know that?" Sebastian asks gently, stroking his back.

"I don't know what you've done," Ciel murmurs against his neck. "But if you say I am, I know I am. Just promise me that you have done nothing this time that will bring any harm to you."

"I promise, Young Master."

"Don't you think it's time you stopped calling me that? I'm almost thirty-five years old."

"If it suits your dignity better, I shall stop addressing you thus," Sebastian smiles. "But you will always be my 'Young Master' to me."

Drawing his head off his shoulder to kiss his lover, Ciel smiles back and whispers huskily: "You can call me whatever you like."

"Yes, my lord."

"Say my name."

"Yes, Ciel."

And there in the midst of mourning and death, is a moment of tenderness that sustains them both.

***

It is 1914. Despair and fear have stolen into the Winterbourn and Midford households, as the eighteen-year-old Vincent Winterbourn and his cousins of sixteen and seventeen, Alex and Eddie Midford, declare that they will go to war now that hostilities have broken out between Great Britain and Germany. Alex and Eddie are not yet old enough, but they will be soon. Vincent is already of age, and he is adamant.

" _Thousands_ of men have joined up, Mother," Vincent protests, when the countess tells him that he is not to think of anything foolish unless conscription is enforced.

"Vincent, for his own reasons, the king has _strongly_ recommended that no one from the house of Phantomhive be called up," Elizabeth tells him firmly. "Our house works so closely with the royal family and with Scotland Yard on domestic matters that we are needed here – _you_ are needed here. The crown knows it, and the army knows it. No one expects you to go."

His green eyes – as brilliant as his mother's, and as keen as his father's – flash angrily as he answers: "Am I to sit at home like a coward while my friends from university go to war? While common men and noblemen alike prepare to fight for our country? Even the Prince of Wales has joined the Army, and the Duke of York is commissioned in the Navy! I could not live with myself if the king's own sons go to war and I do not because of some special Phantomhive exemption!"

Ciel and his daughter Rachel are thoughtfully silent throughout most of this exchange between the countess and the young viscount, but when a pause comes in the fierce firing of words between a determined Elizabeth and an obstinate Vincent, the earl speaks:

"You are of age, and I will not stop you from joining up if you are bent on it. I myself could not be talked out of a course I had determined when I was your age or younger. But if you go, I want you to go knowing that should you be killed in battle, your mother is likely never to recover from the blow of losing another child, do you understand?"

For Elizabeth and Ciel have endured the grief of losing their third child, a daughter, named Alice after Elizabeth's paternal grandmother. She had been born perfectly healthy ten years ago, and everyone had doted on her. But she had suddenly stopped breathing in her crib five weeks after coming into the world. Sebastian had detected the cessation of her breaths at once, and had flown to the nursery in a second to attempt to resuscitate the infant, watched by her frantic parents. But try as the devil might, with all his knowledge and skills, the child would not breathe on her own however long he pressed gently and repeatedly on her tiny chest, and at last her innocent spirit left her body.

Elizabeth took a long time to heal from that loss, especially after the doctors advised her that her health would not safely support the carrying and bearing of any more children. She can scarcely face the idea that her firstborn, her Vincent, may walk away from her into a war and never return to her alive.

"Do you really accept the consequences of your decision, Vincent?" Rachel asks, gently but firmly, wiser at sixteen than her brother is at eighteen.

The boy breaks their hearts with his answer: "I do. If I die, I die. Our family's title is such that daughters can inherit as well, if no sons remain. Therefore, Mother can take comfort in having _you_ to carry on the family name, Rachel. Isn't it true, Father, that when the title belongs to a Countess of Phantomhive, her children can take her family name and not their father's?"

"It is true," Ciel states flatly. "But you have broken your mother's heart."

Carsten, who is lounging in the doorway of the drawing room, has remained as silent as Sebastian has throughout this conversation amongst the family. But even more than Sebastian, this devil has long felt a closeness to and compassion for Elizabeth. He looks now into her beautiful, tormented face, and says quietly, in a manner that will brook no contradiction: "If Lord Winterbourn goes to war, I go beside him. As a demon, I can create the right papers flawlessly, with a suitable identity, and make all the arrangements that no human can make. I will not leave his side for a second. Seen or unseen, I will be there with him."

Elizabeth's rush of tears of sheer relief are all the reward the demon needs.

***

Through the terror of the worldwide conflict that soon comes to be known as the Great War, and the almost unbearable fear for their loved ones that haunts those left behind, the Phantomhives endure. In time, the Midfords too must feel the pain of having their heirs face danger daily, when Alexis and Eddie join up. Like their cousin Vincent, they conceal their rank and parentage, and sign up like all the other ordinary volunteers from villages and towns, football clubs and factories, and vanish into the chaos of Europe.

Ciel is thirty-nine when the war begins, within the age of enlistment. But George V, who has remembered his father's words about the wrongs done to Phantomhive, does all in his power to emphasise how important the earl is to Scotland Yard's ability to enforce law and order in the underworld. Though the royal family no longer commands the same kind of absolute power it once did, a mere word from it is still given far greater regard than firm directives from many other quarters. But the truth is that Ciel _is_ badly needed on the domestic front, so there is no argument that he must remain in England. The underworld is taking the opportunity of the uncertainty and deprivations of war to increase its activities and influence, and the Earl of Phantomhive is the one with the inside knowledge, contacts and power necessary to keep them in check.

As the underworld bustles and Ciel suppresses it wherever necessary, bombs and explosives from enemy aircraft rattle the coastline of Britain, shatter buildings in London, and reduce homes to rubble, killing innocent people who never held a gun or hurt anyone in their lives. Knowing that no bombs will penetrate Sebastian's magical shield, the Phantomhives and their staff wait out the conflict patiently, sheltering their closest friends like Soma, who has married a lady from Spain and is a father of three; Agni and Mey-Rin; an elderly John Jarvis, his son-in-law and the adopted child. Finnian has never married, neither has Paula, or Vidya; but Baldroy and Sumathi fell in love some time ago and have been husband and wife for a few years now.

Protected by one devil at home, and trusting in the loyalty and power of another in the European fields of war, Ciel, Elizabeth, Rachel and their household go about their daily lives while hoping and waiting, clinging to every letter that comes from Vincent, and hoping and praying harder each day as the months pass. Elizabeth thinks that if she did not have Rachel with her, she would go quite mad – how precious every child is, and how fragile life is.

Dismaying reports reach Britain periodically of countless young lives lost, often needlessly, seemingly pointlessly. Dreadful tales of terrible machines and weapons shredding helpless humans deployed by commanders who still think they are fighting horse-mounted armies instead of tanks and aircraft. Horrible poisonous gases and treacherous mines; miles and miles of trenches filled with mud, blood, the dead and the terrified. Heartbreaking rumours of the devastation at the Somme – reports of nearly a hundred thousand British men lost forever in four terrible months. Then more accounts of other losses, other battles, more and more casualties.

Vincent is in France. They know that, but little more. Elizabeth is distraught. Ciel is tense, and Rachel prays quietly every day. Then stories secretly filter back to them through their connections who have people in the war, whispered rumours of how, after a struggle on the Western front in which poisonous gases and buried mines ripped into everything all around them – a situation _no one_ could have survived – a single man with dark gold hair stood up unscathed when all was quiet, after everything was over, picked up another young man whom he had covered with his own body on ground torn up by shrapnel and bullets and fire, and carried him out of the ruins of that field.

Weeks later, just before Christmas 1916, Vincent Winterbourn is sent home from the war with a shattered left leg and a dangerously high fever – but miraculously, otherwise unharmed. Elizabeth never leaves his side, and Sebastian tends him as devotedly as he tended Ciel, until the young man pulls through at last, the fever breaking, the awful wounds closing up.

On the day he knows he will live and begin the slow road to recovery, Vincent opens his eyes after a sound sleep to find his exhausted mother resting her head on her arms at his bedside, his father asleep in a chair, his sister curled up under a blanket on the couch at the other end of the room, Carsten leaning against the door frame, and Sebastian wiping the sweat off his brow as his fever breaks for good.

"Sebastian..." he murmurs.

"I believe you will be fine from here on, my lord," the steward says with a calm smile, giving him water to drink.

Their soft exchange wakes Elizabeth, and her eyes fill with tears of joy when she realises that her son is going to live.

"I'm so sorry, Mama," Vincent whispers, clasping her hand. "Please forgive me for making you cry. I don't regret fighting for my country and my king, but I realised very quickly how much I had hurt you. So many of my friends... as they fell and lay dying in the mud... they wept for their mothers, knowing they would be heartbroken. I knew that I did not want you to lose me like that..."

"Say no more," Lizzie whispers back quickly. "No more. I understand. I only want you to be well and strong again."

The injured leg, operated on and set carefully by a doctor, eventually heals, but he will always walk with a limp.

His constant companion in the battlefield and in the barracks, a man with dark gold hair named Charles Fox, is later listed as missing in battle, presumed dead. Only the Phantomhives know that "Charles Fox" returned to their manor beside Vincent, the devil as calm and ostensibly uninvolved as ever, although he is clearly the reason that their son and brother has returned to them alive.

One evening, as Ciel moves between his study and the library, he sees Lizzie and Carsten along one of the galleries, both her hands held in his, their foreheads touching. She is saying to him: "Thank you for bringing my son home to me. I can never tell you how grateful I am."

"I did it for you as much as for him," is the devil's even reply.

"I know. Thank you."

The exchange ends there. She slips her hands out of his and walks on to whichever room of the manor she had been headed for when she encountered him. Carsten realises Ciel is there, and glances down the passageway at him, but says nothing before walking away.

Ciel, alone in the passageway, absorbs what he has just witnessed. He has long known that Carsten has a strong attachment to Lizzie and the children, but it is at this moment that he realises that the devil's attachment to Lizzie may be of a different nature from his closeness to Vincent and Rachel. Ciel is very certain that Lizzie has never sexually reciprocated Carsten's affection – she is far too loyal to him for that. But even if she did, he could hardly complain. He has Sebastian. Why should she too not have someone else who admires her in that special way?

***

By this time, Sebastian has given Elizabeth more than the fifteen years she asked for with Ciel. Sixteen years have come and gone, and one day soon after Vincent no longer needs crutches to hobble around on and can manage with one of his father's old walking sticks, Elizabeth finds a private moment with the steward.

"You've more than kept your word to me, Sebastian. The children have grown up. I won't stop you from doing what you and Ciel wish."

"His Lordship is never happier than when he is at home, my lady," Sebastian replies. "Truth be told, I like it here too."

For he and Ciel have their magical worlds to slip into whenever they require complete privacy. The family is not always with them when they drive to London either, so they often have the town house to themselves.

Through all the hours, days and years of passion, witty exchanges and affectionate spats, they have never tired of each other. Sebastian had been quite sure when Ciel was fourteen that the earl would weary of him one day, and he would have to watch over him from a distance. Ciel, too, had often wondered if Sebastian would be seized by a devilish whim at any moment and abandon him forever.

Somehow, neither has happened.

"Wouldn't you rather take a younger lover, Sebastian?" Ciel regularly teases when the devil starts undressing him on those nights they have all to themselves.

"Wouldn't you rather take a human lover, my lord?" Sebastian teases back.

"You've already altered your appearance in public to seem older, so that people won't be suspicious of why you never age. Then you come into my bedroom and resume being the Sebastian you always were. With the infinite variety you offer me, why would I want any other lover, human or not?" Ciel asks.

"With your beautiful spirit and soul as bright and perfect to me as they ever were, while your body changes in the most fascinating ways, why would I seek anyone else of any age?"

"You charming bastard," Ciel purrs, drawing Sebastian towards him by his tie.

"Irresistible brat," Sebastian retorts, letting himself be pulled towards the handsome man in his prime.

"One can't be a brat at forty-one."

" _You_ can, my lord."

"Shut up."

"Kiss me and I will be quiet."

***

Soon, Sebastian and Ciel are relieved that they have not chosen to travel for a time, because troubles cripple the Midford family. The war still rages in Europe and the colonies, and Alex Midford, Elizabeth's eldest nephew, is killed in France. He comes home in a coffin. That his brother Eddie returns alive is some comfort, but nothing can take away the pain of his parents and grandparents as they bury their heir. The Marquess of Midford succumbs to a long struggle against cancer very soon after his grandson's funeral. Lady Francis, always so strong and resolute, seems at first absolutely determined to carry on with life as a widow and Dowager Marchioness. But despite not showing any outward weakness, she must have let her grief pierce her deep within, for within weeks of her husband's passing, she is felled by pneumonia, fades with shocking swiftness, and dies battling for breath.

Edward and Elizabeth are devastated. Ciel deeply mourns the loss of his last close relation from his parents' generation. He is stunned that the aunt he imagined would live forever like a sword of the strongest steel has left this world so suddenly.

How fragile human life is. How abruptly it can all end. He feels a shiver run through him as he thinks of how Sebastian will one day be without him.

"Do you want to live forever?" Sebastian asks him when they are next alone, discussing mortality and immortality.

"Using Ambrose's methods? Culling your powers like a parasite, the way he culled Carsten's? Feasting off the life forces of other humans?" Ciel responds. "No. I would have died at ten, then thirteen, then at any time my enemies overpowered me, or sickness took me, or the spell that chained me to the scale of balance destroyed me. But each time, you intervened. I have already lived well beyond what I might once have expected. I will not do as Ambrose did. It would perhaps be the greatest error in a life already riddled with so much sin."

"I won't abandon you, not in life, not in death."

"You'll have to devour me to keep me with you forever. I'm not heaven-bound, that's for sure, and your fellow demons won't let you back into hell. There's no other way."

"We shall see."

***

John Jarvis passes away peacefully in his sleep one night, at the age of seventy-five. His simple funeral overflows with love and sorrow from an astonishing number and variety of people, from earls to paupers, young and old, humans and demons.

Carsten nods to the coffin in a gesture of respect. Ciel chokes back a torrent of tears. And Sebastian touches his fingers lightly to the wood and says softly: "Goodbye, my friend."

***

At the end of the war, Rachel Winterbourn realises that she has been in love with Rakesh, Agni and Mey-Rin's eldest son, for longer than she knows. She does not know when or how it happened, but she loves him, and she realises it only when he comes home from the war, somewhat battered and with a haunted look in his gold-green eyes that lifts only when he looks at her. What is more wondrous to her is his confession to her that he too has adored her for a long time, but never dared to address her until she began to seek him out.

Ciel has always thought of his beloved daughter as deserving no less than a prince for a husband. He is initially taken aback by this development, despite his long association with Agni and Mey-Rin. _My Rachel, marrying the son of two people who used to be servants? Even if Agni was once Brahmin royalty, who was Mey-Rin but a hired assassin?_

But almost as soon as he thinks it, he feels ashamed of himself. Agni and Mey-Rin are loyal friends, and the two young people love each other, and that should be _all_ that counts. Besides, the times are changing. Absolute lines between social classes are slowly but steadily eroding. While marriage between people of different races is still frowned upon, it happens with greater regularity. In Ciel's own circle, there are several examples of cultures merging in this way, and it must be occurring in other circles too. Especially now that some of their fellow Europeans have shown them what terrible enemies they can be, some of the British are starting to see that people from other faraway cultures may not necessarily be much more alien than those to whom they have historically been closer.

Unlike Ciel, Elizabeth does not hesitate to give her wholehearted blessing to the coming union. She has never lost her romantic ideals, despite all she has lived through.

So in the summer of 1919, Ciel gives his twenty-one-year-old daughter away to the son of his friends, and with each step he walks with her towards the kind and beautiful young man who will be her husband, he grows in the certainty that he is doing the right thing.

He also knows, by the end of the celebration – a tasteful but very simple one because England is still staggering from the aftermath of the war and the devastation of the Spanish influenza – that the years are speeding by, life is short, and he wants to spend more time alone with Sebastian before it is too late.

The earl and the devil begin to travel out of Great Britain, spending much of the 1920s visiting America, the Far East, India, Africa, and European countries which had been Britain's allies or neutral parties in the war. In most of these places, no one knows who they are. By day, in the open, they quietly enjoy each other's closeness and conversation; by night, or in private, they merge, eagerly, passionately, tenderly, knowing that time and years are relentless.

In between their travels to different places, they return home for Ciel to rest for weeks at a stretch. There, the earl sees that Vincent has truly matured and is handling all his father's duties with the greatest competence and responsibility.

"Look at you," Ciel says proudly to his son one day. "You are already a better earl than I am."

"Papa, _you_ are the earl. I'm only learning," Vincent replies sincerely. For he has learnt humility and developed a deep love for his family and friends since seeing so many of his comrades die beside him.

"No, you will be a better Earl of Phantomhive than I ever was," Ciel tells him. "And you will be the Earl of Phantomhive sooner than you might think."

At once, Vincent is alarmed, for a peer cannot abdicate from his title the way a king or queen might abdicate a throne. Even if a peer rejects a title he holds, the title remains his until he dies. Ciel could declare himself no longer Earl of Phantomhive, and insist on passing the title on to his son at once, but it would not work that way. The title would be held in suspension until his death, and only then would Vincent receive it.

Vincent is already thirty years old. Ciel does not want so deserving a son to have to wait much longer.

"Papa, what are you saying?" Vincent has dropped his papers and come round to clasp his father's hand anxiously. "Are you sick, Papa? Is something wrong?"

Ciel laughs and grips the young man's hand firmly. "No, I'm not sick. I'm perfectly well. But I am going to make certain that you receive this title you deserve, with all its honours and privileges, as you already have so much of its responsibility."

"Papa...?" Vincent is eyeing him suspiciously now, knowing the craftiness and cunning of his sire. "What are you up to?"

"I am going to 'die', without actually dying just yet."

"I do _not_ like the sound of that," Vincent says firmly, disapprovingly.

"Oh, don't be such a stuffed shirt," Ciel huffs, with a mischievous smile on his face. "I 'died' once at ten, so I know what it's like. It will be fine."

So it is that in 1926, Ciel Winterbourn, fifteenth Earl of Phantomhive, is widely reported as having died of heart failure while travelling in India. The relevant documents are sent home to England, and soon, an ash-filled urn is delivered to the manor, together with Ciel's blue diamond ring and signet ring. The beautiful black headstone is erected, the old marker wrongly put up in 1885 is buried in the grave along with the urn, and the ground covered up.

Vincent Alexis Sebastian Winterbourn becomes the sixteenth Earl of Phantomhive.

***

Far and wide they travel together, wrapped in each other. Sebastian has seen much of many worlds, but a great deal is still new to Ciel, and the devil takes pleasure in the interest and excitement of his master.

But whatever Ciel sees and experiences, it is always Sebastian who gives him the greatest pleasure and the greatest wonder, when they lie together in a shared bed all night, or steal moments away from other eyes.

"How you must have loathed me when I was a brat of ten," Ciel laughs softly in Singapore one night, as he and Sebastian look back on their earliest months together.

"You were certainly a difficult child," Sebastian huffs.

"But I smelt tasty, didn't I?" Ciel smirks.

"Utterly delicious."

Another night, in Agra, Sebastian whispers into the earl's ear in the wake of a passionate coupling: "When did you really begin to want me in your bed, my lord? Were you already jealous when I used the prostitute?"

"Perhaps I was," Ciel whispers back. "I may not have been attracted to you in that way, at that time, but you were always _mine_ , and I suppose I was a little jealous."

"And horribly disgusted."

"Yes, that too, you filthy bastard."

They laugh, and slip into each other's arms again.

In New York, Ciel tells Sebastian just before he falls asleep in his embrace: "You must forget me when I am gone. Don't cling to what is lost."

"Even after a million years, I would not forget you."

"I'm just a man. Men come and go. You'll find a thousand more like me in time to come."

"There will never be anyone like you for me again."

Then they are in Paris, and the scent of war is again on the winds.

"I think it's time we went home, Sebastian," Ciel murmurs.

"Let us go, my lord."

***

Vincent, Eddie Midford, Rakesh, his brother Dakshi, and Jarvis' adopted grandson, Maurice, are all in their forties, too old to be called up for the second great war. Vincent's bad leg would rule him out in any case, along with his essential domestic duties as the Earl of Phantomhive. The others volunteer for civil work, to give all they can to Britain.

Baldroy, who married late in life and has a son and a daughter with Sumathi, is already in his seventies. Ciel and Elizabeth hurt for this elderly, loyal servant of theirs, who waves goodbye to his thirty-one-year-old son as he is sent off to the East. But Baldroy was a soldier in his time, and he knows that what must be done must be done.

Even the women who are of age are all registered and called up to play their part in defending their country. They will not bear arms, but they must work – in civil defence; in the factories churning out munitions and aircraft; in the navy and air force, watching for enemy aircraft, ships and missiles; as drivers and clerks. Elizabeth, at 65, is too old to be conscripted, but Rachel, her daughter Margaret, Soma's wife and daughters, Baldroy's daughter, and Vincent's wife, Clarissa, all sign up to do what they can to help. Ciel suspects that Sebastian and Carsten have a lot to do with the way things turn out, for all the women they care for are assigned roles in or close to London, and are able to come home from work almost every day.

Nonetheless, there is danger and death at home too. Bombs rain from the sky. Ports, ships and airfields are blown up. Ciel, Sebastian and Carsten see Shinigami everywhere – Grelle blows kisses at Sebastian whenever their paths cross. Cities are battered. London burns, and a million of its houses are lost. Soma and Agni, who after the first war sold most of their houses and invested in gold instead, are largely unaffected financially, although Soma does lose two houses in the Blitz. He does not care about the loss of the homes, however; it is the terrible waste of human life that brings him to tears.

Carsten moves temporarily to London to keep a closer eye on Rachel and Rakesh, and Soma's and Agni's families, for Elizabeth's sake; Sebastian holds the fort at the manor.

Ciel has been living quietly in the manor, unnoticed by the world outside. Sebastian has created documents for him that will show him to be a relative of the Phantomhives from Kent in case identities are checked in this time of war. But no one checks the manor too closely, and Ciel is left in peace to get to know his daughter-in-law, Clarissa, and his granddaughters, Alice and Frances, who are eleven and nine at the start of the war.

Clarissa came from a good family, and is well-matched with Vincent although she is no great beauty – the earl first fell in love with her at a dinner party one year after Ciel's "death" because of her kindness of heart and her quiet strength. Their eldest daughter Alice was named for her infant aunt who passed away, and Frances for Lady Francis. As with everyone who is deserving of a place in the Phantomhive manor, Clarissa, Alice and Frances know how to keep a secret, and they grow delightfully curious about and fond of Ciel and Sebastian over the years.

At long last, the war does end. Germany and Japan surrender. Baldroy's son comes home in one piece, just in time to spend a few months with his father before he passes away. The world will never be the same again, yet, amidst the sorrow and bitterness of loss, amidst the tears and outrage that flow as the worst atrocities of the war begin to come to light, there is hope that life will be better now, that each part of this planet will become a better place eventually.

Ciel and Sebastian begin to travel again, visiting a new place every year and returning to the manor in between. But one day in 1954, in Kyoto, after receiving word that Soma has passed away, Ciel says quietly to Sebastian: "I'd like to go home now. I think my time is coming."

Sebastian has scented the hint of death in Ciel's body for some weeks, and he knows that Ciel is right.

"Let's go home, my lord."

***

The devil attends to his lover and master with as much devotion as he did when the man was a child. Ciel has little physical strength now, and Sebastian is content just to lie beside him and hold him. But his mind is as sharp as ever, and his blue eyes have not lost their clarity or keenness.

"Don't you wish I was still young and beautiful?" Ciel asks him one night, after Elizabeth and his granddaughters – who have returned to the manor for the weekend – have come in to kiss him goodnight, then left them alone.

"You know that your physical age has never mattered to me," Sebastian murmurs, stroking his master's thin arm. "It never mattered to me if you were ten or fourteen or twenty-four, forty, sixty or eighty. When I look at your physical self, I simply see _you_ , and you are beautiful to me. When I look at your spirit and soul, I see even greater beauty – brightness – brilliance – and an intriguing compassion for others."

"Still, I'm very old."

"Not as old as I am," Sebastian smiles, kissing one thin cheek and the withered lips.

"Oh, you're _ancient_ , you are," Ciel replies sardonically, looking up at the beautiful face which the devil designs to look old in public, but here in private, has not altered a whit from what it was before.

" _Very_ ancient." Another kiss.

"I don't want to be apart from you after I leave this body. You'll have to eat me."

"Maybe not."

" _Now_ what have you done?" Ciel asks suspiciously after a weighty pause, eyeing the demon.

"You'll see."

The negotiations that began after wrestling with God in the sphere have been going on for a long time now, and are nearly at a close.

***

One day in 1955, watched over by Elizabeth, who is herself quite frail now, Vincent and Clarissa, Rachel and Rakesh, Margaret, Alice and Frances, Sebastian and Carsten, Ciel Winterbourn, the fifteenth Earl of Phantomhive, passes away peacefully in his bed, saying at the last: "I regret nothing, and I repent of nothing."

Sebastian dresses his master for the last time. Then in devilish secrecy, the demons and the Winterbourns bury Ciel, who has had two false deaths in his lifetime, but has at last genuinely departed from his body.

Those who are close enough to know and remember will be able to describe how, on this day after so many years of calm smiles, there is genuine grief at the elegant black headstone. How the Dowager Countess of Phantomhive kneels on her aching old knees and weeps her heart out, how her children, Vincent and Rachel, cry beside her, and how the grandchildren first feel the heavy sorrow of the loss of someone they have deeply loved. How the ground is covered with the palest sterling silver roses.

Most of all, those who are close enough will be able to describe how Sebastian Michaelis stands alone by the grave, which now truly holds the bodily remains of Ciel Phantomhive.

The latter two lines inscribed on the headstone are added at this time, and when at last the family helps a grieving Elizabeth back to the house, Sebastian remains by the grave, keeping vigil well into the night. Carsten watches him from a distance, but says nothing, knowing that he must not intrude on this delicate time.

Late, late into the night, the devil waits and watches over his master's body like a faithful hound. Then finally, the long negotiations end, and only those who have the eyes to see can see what happens next.

To those who do not have the eyes to see, it appears that Sebastian Michaelis is still standing there, head bowed, all alone. And yet, it appears that he is speaking to someone, and smiling, and caressing something that cannot be seen.

 _So this is your plan,_ says a laughing voice that only those with the ears to hear would hear.

"Yes, Young Master. I hope you approve," Sebastian smiles.

_I couldn't have dreamed up anything better._

"I see that you like all the things you can do as a soul and spirit," the devil remarks.

Those who can see would be able to observe how Sebastian seems one moment to be speaking to someone close to him in height, then the next moment appears to be addressing the being as if it were a good deal smaller – like a child.

_How do you want me? Like this, as I was at thirteen? Or like this, as I was at twenty-five?_

"I want you in every way you like to be," the devil chuckles, now holding the child to his chest.

_It's interesting, this feeling..._

"What feeling, Young Master?"

_How much sensation there is through every pore of this spirit-body – I can tell I won't need food, or water, or air, or even lovemaking, but it's as if I'm being fed and sated and contented just by holding you and merging lightly into you, like this..._

"It is most pleasing, is it not? You now know how satisfying it used to be to me to merge with a soul by devouring it – something I no longer need to do, thanks to all the power I seized from the spell."

_So we'll have our own world, our own paradise? Is that really what you negotiated for?_

"Yes. Our own world between the absolute lines of heaven, hell and earth, as John Jarvis once said. I no longer belong in hell, and I will be damned a million times over again if I let you go there without me. Neither of us belongs in heaven or on earth, but I have negotiated for something never done before, and it has been granted. Our world, our space, our heaven."

_Did you create that world?_

"No, that is the wonder of it. I did not create it. _Someone_ else did. But I have been granted the key."

_Then let us go, Sebastian._

"After you, my lord."

With his invisible key, Sebastian Michaelis opens a doorway that is quite unlike any of the other doorways Ciel has ever seen of the nowhere-worlds he has been in. This is better, more beautifully formed, and it leads into a vast universe that the earl can see promises to hold all the space and time in which he and Sebastian may explore its wonders – and each other.

"It is a place where you can be at peace – where I can be at peace," Sebastian says.

"It's perfect."

Ciel steps in, and Sebastian enters after him. The devil looks out at the earthly world one more time, nods a farewell to Carsten, and seals the doorway forever.

Perhaps devils and earls of Phantomhive do not belong in the presence of God, but the earl whose name means "heaven" is all the paradise that Sebastian needs and wants. So into their own world they go, Ciel Phantomhive and Sebastian Michaelis, no longer seeking a return to heaven, for in each other's presence, heaven is before them, always.

\- END -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Observations for those who may be interested:**
> 
>  
> 
> Names  
> I have followed the Square Enix and Yen Press English spellings of character names, as they are the publishers of the manga and other authorised material:
> 
> \- Baldroy rather than Bardroy. I believe the closest real-life surname would be "Balderoy", which may be derived from the English surnames "Bald" or "Bauld", or the Germanic-Italian surnames Balde and Baldo, which all mean "bold" in Old English and Germanic; and the French or Scottish surname "Roy" (meaning "red" if French, and "king" if Scottish).
> 
> \- Mey-Rin (my take on this is that the girl was a wanted criminal under her original name, and when Sebastian brought her home, Tanaka rechristened her with a Japanese monicker)
> 
> \- Grelle Sutcliff (I prefer "Grell Sutcliffe", but I am sticking with the publishers' spelling)
> 
> \- Mina (a more likely spelling of this Indian name would be "Meena", but again, I'm sticking with the publishers' version)
> 
> \- Lady Francis (rather than the more likely "Lady Frances")
> 
>  **19th-century / Victorian events:**  
>  Real-life incidents in 19th-century/Victorian England alluded to in this story:
> 
> \- The Vere Street Coterie Scandal. In 1810, a 16-year-old boy and a 46-year-old man were hanged for being associated with a male brothel on Vere Street.
> 
> \- Death sentences for child criminals. Possibly the most striking example of the harshness of law and justice in England was in 1814, when an eight-year-old boy was sentenced to death and hanged for stealing food.
> 
> \- The Ripper murders. These occurred from 31 August to 9 November 1888.
> 
> \- The Cleveland Street Scandal. This broke in July 1889. The investigating officer was Frederick Abberline, who also investigated the Ripper murders.
> 
> \- The death of Prince Albert Victor on 14 January 1892 made his younger brother, George, the heir to the heir of the English throne.
> 
> \- Oscar Wilde's sentence of two years' imprisonment with hard labour dated from May 1895, for "gross indecency" with Lord Alfred Douglas and other men. He was released from prison in May 1897, sick and penniless. He died in Paris in November 1900, in poverty, at the age of 46.
> 
> \- Queen Victoria's death in January 1901, at the age of 81. Her eldest son ascended the throne as Edward VII, and reigned for nine years until his death in May 1910. He was succeeded by his second son, who reigned as George V.
> 
>  **Other matters of culture and society:**  
>  \- The legal age for marriage without parental consent in England after 1823 was 14 for boys and 12 for girls. This was a return to Tudor and pre-Tudor times, when girls were often married at 12, became mothers by 13, were grandmothers by 30, and were in many cases dead by 40. It was actually a _regression_ from 17th- and 18th-century norms, when 21 was the legal age of marriage for men and women without parental consent, and around 16 to 18 with parental consent.
> 
> \- It was legal for first cousins in England to marry. (Interesting side note: it was illegal from 1835 until 1907 for a man in England to marry his dead wife's sister. It may throw some light on Madam Red's devastation as a young girl in the manga and anime, when the Earl of Phantomhive married her sister – she would have known that even if Rachel should ever die, the earl would never be able to marry her.)
> 
> \- Locks of hair were considered highly intimate gifts in the Victorian and pre-Victorian eras. These were often kept in lockets, or bound carefully and kept between the pages of personal diaries.
> 
> \- Civil marriages were allowed in England from 1836.
> 
> \- Homosexual acts between males were punishable by death in England until 1861, and punishable by imprisonment from 1885. Homosexual acts between consenting adult males were legalised in England only in 1967, with the age of consent set at 21, later amended to 18 in 1994, and most recently to 16 in 1997.
> 
> \- Homosexual acts between females were not legislated in Victorian times, because Queen Victoria refused to believe that it was possible for women to be homosexual.


End file.
